
California State Assembly - District 25
District 25 — California State Assembly
Get the facts on the California candidates running for election to the District 25 — California State Assembly
Find out their top 3 priorities, their experience, and who supports them.
About this office
Candidates
- Housing Affordability
- Transit access and growth
- Environmental protection
- Reactivating in-patient treatment for brain-damaged,...
- Making law enforcement better (the Legislature seeks...
- Undoing the enormous impediments to affordable housing...
My Top 3 Priorities
- Housing Affordability
- Transit access and growth
- Environmental protection
Who supports this candidate?
Organizations (11)
Who gave money to this candidate?
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My Top 3 Priorities
- Reactivating in-patient treatment for brain-damaged, drug-addicted, and mentally ill street dwellers.
- Making law enforcement better (the Legislature seeks to undermine it) and more efficient (it is costly).
- Undoing the enormous impediments to affordable housing for which California has become notorious.
Who supports this candidate?
Organizations (1)
Questions & Answers
Questions from League of Women Voters of California (4)
Separate problems have to be addressed separately.
(1) For most people, the only way to begin to smooth out the California housing market's vast distortions and dysfunctions is to: (a) take away the ability of unreasonably NIMBY neighbors to veto housing they don't want nearby; (b) change zoning and permitting laws that make it difficult to develop housing, while at the same time preserve neighborhood character (admittedly this is a difficult balancing act); (c) not ruin the rental housing market by making life for reasonable small-business landlords difficult and encouraging them to quit the business (while at the same time not tolerating bad landlords' abuses).
(2) As for the enormous statewide problem of mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless people, we must restore treatment in various types of facilities. Currently, unhoused people brain-damaged by drugs or otherwise seriously mentally ill can only be asked to accept treatment, and if they refuse, as many do, they’re not treated, because state law makes it almost impossible. Some are too incapacitated to be asked to consent and must be treated involuntarily if necessary, subject to judicial safeguards.
Anyone who purports to be able to offer a precise answer to this enormously complex issue is doing the voters a disservice. I cannot indulge in that. I will study specific pieces of legislation as they come before me.
We cannot repeat the disaster of the loss of in-person instruction that happened during Covid. As I understand it, private schools in California remained open for the most part and without dire consequences. The public schools or institutions that influence them seem to have panicked about having children in classrooms even when, again as I understand it, health authorities said it would be safe. In a recent study, California ranked 50th among the states in the loss of in-person learning, with only 19.2% of instruction in public schools taking place in classrooms during Covid. But I am not an expert in this area and do not claim to have a complete answer.
We need major infrastructure improvements. Among them, I would favor a pipeline or pipelines bringing water from British Columbia or the Great Lakes. To be sure, Canadians or other states would have to consent, but California is wealthy and could pay generously for water. It would be a form of trade, and trade is universally understood among economists to benefit all parties to it.
If pipelines prove to be politically infeasible, then we need desalinization plants and more dams. Desalinization is expensive and has a high carbon footprint, I gather. Dams have other environmental consequences. But to do as little as we have while the state's population has multiplied is foolish and courts disaster during future prolonged droughts.
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Political Beliefs
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Top political priorities
Here is how I hope to make a difference.
I live in downtown San José in a modest neighborhood. I’m running for Assembly District 25 in the state Legislature. The primary is in June, the general election in November.
I’m running to try to solve the problem of mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless people. Also, we have to be creative about getting more law enforcement at less cost. And there are other issues. Specifically:
1. To solve homelessness, we must reactivate in-patient care for street dwellers’ mental illnesses and drug addictions. Currently, unhoused people brain-damaged by drugs or otherwise seriously mentally ill can only be asked to accept treatment, and if they refuse, as many do, they’re not treated, because state law makes it almost impossible. This must change.
2. Incumbents in Sacramento proposed legislation that would have reduced the penalty for certain injury-causing muggings to the minor crime of petty theft. I will oppose such mistakes. We need to address serious traffic violations like street racing with the same innovations that other places are using.
3. A legislative proposal for the state to take over health care, accompanied by enormous tax increases, was rushed along with little debate. It failed too, but also is likely to be revived. The current system isn’t perfect, but the stakes are enormous. What if providers like Kaiser Permanente no longer exist, a state budget crisis leads to health-care cuts, and you have to wait months to be helped for back pain or fading eyesight?
4. The county board of supervisors gave a single employee, the public health director, enormous authority over the economy during the Covid pandemic. Various mistakes harmed many small businesses. State lawmakers must reconsider county health directors’ ability to govern single-handedly.
5. California universities take tax dollars from parents whose last names are Chen, Kumar, Nguyen, Núñez, Pereira, and Smith. They should not grant or deny admission to your children on the basis of their last names.
My background is in criminal law. I’m moderate and pragmatic. No one knows the whole truth about everything, but plenty think they do, and the resulting polarization is wrecking politics. I’m running as a Republican, but when the Legislature does something right I will vote for it, whether the sponsors have an R or a D after their names.