Candidates for 28th district Senate seat debate as election draws near

Before a sparse crowd of about 20 people, four out of the eight candidates running for the state Senate's 28th District debated issues such as homeless housing, taxes and California’s three strikes law Thursday night.

The candidates are running for the state Senate seat previously occupied by the late Jenny Oropeza, who was posthumously re-elected in November. The 28th District includes Marina del Rey, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Venice.

Democrat Kevin McGurk, independent progressive Mark Lipman, and Republicans Martha Flores Gibson and James P. Thompson convened at Long Beach’s Century Villages at Cabrillo, a transitional housing community for homeless people and families. Most of the attendees were residents at the community.

The four missing candidates were Republicans Jeffrey E. Fortini and Bob Valentine, third party candidate Michael Chamness, and Democrat and former 53rd District Assemblyman Ted Lieu.

Lieu is the considered the front-runner since 48.11 percent of the 465,278 registered voters in the district are Democrats, compared with only 24.99 percent Republicans. Twenty-two percent of voters in the district declined to state a party.

The forum gave the candidates a chance to promote their ideas. Lipman called for “a statewide moratorium on homelessness” with his plan to spend $18 billion to provide housing for every homeless person in the state, which he said would ultimately save California $25 billion, according to his analysis of reports issued by groups such as the United Way and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

McGurk, a public defender in Venice, proposed that California suspend the death penalty until the state is no longer in the red, pointing out that it has not been used in five years and yet costs California $200 million a year. He also proposed to increase education spending. “We cannot spend more on prisons than schools,” McGurk said.

Thompson listed his priorities as increasing jobs, cutting the deficit, and reducing the size of government. He said his work as an attorney, a Superior Court judge pro tem, and the owner of business that provides housing for low-income people helped shaped his views.

 “If the government would get its foot off of my throat, off business’s throat, we can create jobs, but nobody seems to be able to do that in Sacramento. We need to send somebody there who is a business owner,” he said.

Flores Gibson brought up her plan to audit government programs to see where there was fraud and waste. “Decentralization works,” she said. “Eliminate the middle man. We don’t need a big government in Sacramento. What we need are those tax dollars to go back to local communities and school districts.”

At times the candidates contradicted each other with their own set of facts. In response to one question about cutting spending or raising revenues to improve the economy, McGurk said, “Cutting taxes alone doesn’t assure job growth or increase revenue. We tried that with the Bush tax cuts, and the economy didn’t exactly hit a trampoline, did it?” He added that targeted tax cuts could spur business growth.

A few minutes later Thompson said, “If you cut taxes there’ll be more spending, more jobs and more sales tax, more taxpayers – that’s where the money for the state comes from.”

Differences also arose over the three strikes law, which voters passed in a 1994 ballot measure. McGurk said voters were “sold a false bill of goods” about the law and that there’s a good chance they’d repeal it if they were educated to “what it really means” and its financial cost to the state. Thompson said the fact is, the law has worked and violent crime is down.

After the debate ended, Doug Seagraves, a tenant at Cabrillo and the chairman of its Tenant Council, said he enjoyed the forum for giving him an opportunity to learn more about the candidates’ positions.

“I thought the candidates’ answers were somewhat vague on big issues, but they’re not in Sacramento, they don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes or how they’re going to maneuver their policies in,” he said. “They’re going to be a junior senator, no matter who it is, and our political system now leans toward the seniority.”