There is an important election on June 8, and it is important that you vote.
Assembly District 9. Endorsed: Chris Garland and Kevin Mc Carty. Sacramento Progressive Alliance
Why vote for Chris Garland? Its time to shake up the Capitol.
The Sacramento Progressive Alliance and others interviewed each of the major candidates for Assembly District 9, most of the district lies within Sacramento. This is the seat currently held by Dave Jones. District 9 has a 55.9 % Democrat, 19.8 Republican, 19.4 % decline to state voter registration. ( Plus American Independent 2.5%, Green 1%, Libertarian 0.5%, and Peace and Freedom 0.8%).
After considering the major candidates on the issues most important to the Progressive Alliance, we recommend that you vote for either Chris Garland or Kevin Mc Carty. This post explains why we prefer Chris Garland. A following post will explain why support Kevin Mc Carty. All four of the major candidates on the Democratic side were impressive. We will be able to support anyone of them who wins the primary.
Garland explains his advocacy this way. “ California’s in trouble.
Our state budget is in a constant state of crisis, our policy-makers are gridlocked, and vital services are at-risk. Teachers are being laid off, and the promise of quality higher education for all may be a thing of the past.”
Chris Garland is currently the political director of the California Faculty Association. His responses were clearly closest to the perspective of the Progressive Alliance. Like most of the candidates, he has served in positions as staff within the legislature. He was deputy director of member services for the Assembly Speaker’s office from 2005-2007. We regard this significant legislative experience as valuable. In this era of term limits, electing a person with prior experience in the legislature allows that person to lead rather than spend the first two years in on-the-job training.
We regard dealing with the higher education budget crisis (along with that of k-12) as critical. Of all of the candidates, Chris Garland best understood the crisis of budgets and higher education in California.
In the last two years California’s k-12 schools have taken over a $16 Billion cut . California presently ranks 47th of the states in per pupil spending and last among the states in class size. Now, the Governor proposes to reduce k-12 spending by another $2.4 Billion. Last year alone, the U.C’s and the CSU campuses have taken over a $2 billion cut while tuition and fees were increased over 30%. Classes have been cut, graduation delayed, and over 2000 faculty dismissed. CSU tuition has increased by 182% under Schwarzenegger . Next year some 40,000 eligible students will be denied access to California universities. The crisis in k-12 is equally severe as described in Robles-Wong et al. V. State of California (May 2010). We need an Assemblyperson who will work with communities and labor to save pubic education in California.
