A brain surgeon by day and law professor by night, Nizam Razack feels ready for rigors of Congress

Dr. Nizam Razack has proven himself a versatile professional, teaching law classes when he isn’t performing neurosurgery. Now, he wants to serve his community in Congress.

“I’m an entrepreneur. I have a medical practice and a law consulting business, and I’m a law school professor. So I’m hoping to get the White House’s attention by seeing that I’m a working man,” Razack said. “I have my own businesses, and my qualifications and my background are different than any of the other candidates.”

The Dr. Phillips Republican was already considering campaigning for office when his Congressman, U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, announced he would retire at the end of this term.

“I thought that the timing would be right with me slowing down my medical practice. I’ve already started slowing it down,” Razack said. “I threw my hat in the ring because I was looking for that opportunity, regardless.”

Now he’s one of five Republicans seeking the GOP nomination for the open seat in Florida’s 11th Congressional District. He faces former Lake County Property Appraiser Carey Baker, analyst Ivette Palomo, business owner Joe Strada and comedian Tim Wilkins.

This marks the first time Razack has sought public office, but he has been involved in Republican Primary politics for almost two decades, first attracted by the Tea Party movement and the fight against the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

“That’s when I first got involved with the Republican Party, but my kids were young then, and I couldn’t do anything in terms of the general political realm,” he recalled. “But I got elected to President of our Florida Neurosurgical Society back in 2005 and 2006. I was involved with medical politics, if you will, because I didn’t want to quit my day job.”

Razack ended up picking up an extra job along the way, earning a law license and becoming an adjunct professor at Florida A&M University’s College of Law in Orlando, specializing in health care law. “It’s kind of my night job while my day job is brain surgery,” he said.

In Congress, he wants to focus on controlling spending. “In surgery, we call it ‘stop the bleeding,’” he said.

The best way to address that, according to Razack, is to reduce the level of international aid sent to foreign governments. That, he said, is simply a misuse of taxpayer dollars when so many problems exist at home. But he also wants to carefully weed out fraud and abuse domestically.

Meanwhile, he wants to protect health care for veterans and seniors. Having the resources for that will be especially important as more medical care goes to the growing demographic of seniors ages 60 to 90.

The costs can be managed with greater market pressure on the industry, Razack believes.

“The health care GDP is $5 trillion, and about $1 trillion of that is probably overly priced,” he said. “I think focusing on price transparency for hospitals and providers would help bring those costs down.”

He also wants to promote small businesses in the country, which would benefit by any efforts to reduce the price of living and get inflation under control.

“I’m a business owner. I have 15 to 20 employees, depending on what time of year it is, and, I mean, my overheads are high,” Razack said. “My costs are getting higher. My reimbursements are getting lower. People like us, like myself, that have small businesses, that’s the backbone of our nation.”

He thinks small employers will be more important as corporations lean on artificial intelligence to automate functions and eliminate more of the workforce. Already, 70% of workers in the U.S. work for small companies, and that could go up in coming years when major corporations lay off workers by the thousands.

“If we protect our small businesses, we’ll be better able to handle that going forward,” Razack said.