GRoK This!
Gavin Newsom's talk
Tonight, Gavin Newsom, CA gubernatorial candidate and SF mayor, came to Orange County to speak. I took the opportunity to go see him. The talk started at 6pm, but I arrived late (6:45, darned traffic) and as a consequence I had to stand just outside the packed room. I couldn't hear everything, so what follows is just from the sparse notes that I took.
First, he's an engaging speaker. Like him or not, you won't fall asleep when he's talking. Good pace, voice and does it in a casual manner.
He favors a CA constitutional convention. The US Constitution has had 27 amendments in 221 years. The CA Constitution has had over 500 amendments and revisions in 160 years. It's longer than any other state constitution except Alabama.
Bobby Kennedy is hero of his.
On poverty: Bobby Kennedy speech still applicable after 40 years. Frustrating. 40% of African Americans had no access to banks in SF [Gary: couldn't open accounts. Don't remember why]. He helped create program to fix that. The current Governor has never mentioned homeless problem.
Someone brought up Kevin Starr, who said something about higher education and centrist politicians. This segued into talk about open primaries. Newsom thinks that they have merit, but you have to be careful or you might be a Democrat running up against two really rich Republicans.
He's not running against anyone for governor, he's running for governor on a set of ideas. Your call on whether you like those ideas or not.
He considers himself to be "pro job" Democrat. You need workers to do the jobs, and you need corporations to provide the jobs, so treat them both well.
On prison reform: compare number of schools built vs number of prisons built lately. Compare cost of tuition vs cost of incarceration. Some prisons are at 300% capacity. These are not conditions conducive to rehab. Is "war on drugs" producing desired results? We need more things like "Step Down" programs.
On Prop 13: Need honest debate on it. Sales tax is regressive [hits everyone evenly, even those who can't afford it], but property tax is progressive [only affects those who can buy property, and is dependent on the value of the property]. No one supports property tax change for residents. Need to talk about industrial/commercial side. Talked about split rolls, which brings us back to Constitutional Convention.
Afterwards, I had a chance to introduce myself as president of the Canyon Democrats club, in the reddest part of Orange County, and that we'd love to have him as a speaker. He seemed very willing and his staff that I spoke to said that he's always willing to do those kinds of talks, so hopefully sometime (early next year?) we can book him.
Posted at 11:29PM Aug 11, 2009 by Gary Kephart in Politics |