Redistricting has led to a few competitive state assembly districts and ours, the 66th Assembly District, is one of them.
The election pits Torrance School Board member and deputy state attorney general and prosecutor Al Muratsuchi against advertising executive Craig Huey. Huey is the Tea Party activist who used $900,000 of his own money to run for Congress against Janice Hahn. He is still using the same website for his new race for Assembly. One would think a multimillionaire could afford a new website.
Huey is a fine looking gentleman. He even looks presidential—sort of like Herbert Hoover. Huey sounds a lot like President Hoover as well.
Huey believes government should play little or no role in helping make peoples lives better. And he believes in (his motto, his words on his sign) "Cut Spending, Create Jobs!" President Hoover did the same thing at the outset of the Great Depression. He took the view that government had no place in trying to improve the economy and so he cut spending. But it cost jobs as opposed to creating them. The resulting unemployed lived in shantytowns called "Hoovervilles." If we elect Huey and adopt his approach, we will end up with "Hueyvilles" throughout California.
There is another reason we should discard Huey's hooey in favor of Muratsuchi. If elected, Huey will be part of a small, ineffective and obstructionist minority in the Assembly and likely won't be able to achieve anything of significance for his district.
Moreover, Huey has never held elected office before and so is very unlikely to know how to navigate Sacramento. Huey's background as an ad man may help him in campaigns, but Muratsuchi's experience on a school board and as a deputy attorney general and prosecutor for the state is more likely to be helpful in office.
It's not fair that some areas get fewer government benefits just because they elect an ineffective and inexperienced representative. But life isn't fair. If we shortchange ourselves by electing the wrong person to represent us we will have only ourselves to blame for the results.
