Republican Candidate for Governor Visits PV

Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari will discuss his vision for California and his campaign themes of creating jobs and improving education today at a meeting of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Republican Women Federated Club today in Palos Verdes Estates.

The speech comes one day after the Kashkari campaign released the fifth in a series of videos intended to introduce him to voters.

In the 79-second video, Kashkari talks about what the American dream means to him and what he hopes to achieve for the people of California.

“For me, the American dream means that no matter who your parents are, no matter what neighborhood you grow up in, you get a quality education,” Kashkari said on the video.

“And then that quality education opens all of the doors to our country so that it doesn't matter what you look like, it doesn't matter what color your skin is, what country your ultimately came from or what your ethnicity is, it doesn't matter your sexual orientation of your religion.

“All that matters is what you know and what you can do. To me, the American dream is an America where that is true for everyone.”

In the other videos in “The Real Neel” series, Kashkari explained why he is a Republican, why he is optimistic about California's future, ways in which California's tax system is broken and recounts his experiences in leading a group of about 80 graduate students at the University of Illinois in designing and building the Photon Torpedo, a solar-powered car that raced in the 1,000-mile Sunrayce challenge, when he was a graduate student in engineering.

The son of immigrants from India, the 40-year-old Kashkari was raised in the Akron, Ohio, suburb of Stow and received bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Illinois. He moved to California in 1998 and worked as a design engineer at TRW in Redondo Beach, developing technology for NASA space missions.

Kashkari returned to college and received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, then worked in the San Francisco office of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, eventually leading its information technology security practice.

Then-Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson hired Kashkari in 2006 as a special assistant on energy policy. He was appointed by then-President George W. Bush in 2007 as assistant secretary of the Treasury for international economics and development.

Kashkari was among several Paulson aides who wrote the legislation that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program, popularly known as TARP, then oversaw it as interim assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial stability, a position he remained in during the initial months of the Obama administration.

Following his government service, Kashkari worked for the Newport Beach-based global investment management firm PIMCO, resigning last year to explore running for governor.

From the Republican Women's website: The club meets the fourth Tuesday of the month at the Palos Verdes Golf Club, 3301 Via Campesina in Palos Verdes Estates. Social begins  at 10:30 a. m. meeting begins at 11:00 a. m. with a buffet luncheon to follow at noon.

--City News Service