4/23 Steve Glazer 16 区选民见面会发言记录
牡丹燕菜-198 04/24 9170
4.5/88
You are here tonight to talk about politics and things are concerning to you; I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you, explain who I am and why I am running the office of assembly.
Before SCA5 came out, did anybody pay much attention to politics? (Answer from audience: no) I am not surprised; this group probably wasn’t here two years ago. You guys had no reason to come together.
That is not a big surprise, because a lot people take politics for granted why does it involve me? Why should I care? I got my family my jobs I got so many things going on, why should I care? Why care about politics? It is interesting because it was those type things that got me into politics, sometimes in silly ways.
In college I was upset about some decisions they made on the campus so I got involved in student governor. When I was in my city of Orinda, crazy things happened 11 years ago. I was driving with my family and I got shot, right in the neck. I survived, I was lucky, and it got me involved in politics of my town. This person they caught was going to be prosecuted for shooting me or not? What happened to the criminal justice system? That made me pay a lot of attention to that type of issues, made me think a little more about my life and what I want to do because I realized how fragile life can be.
When kids come home with report cards that are bad, hey all of sudden I am paying a lot more attention to my youngsters at schools. If there is something wrong in your jobs then you follow the rules. So these are the type things are kind fortunate and unfortunate, because it is amazing that in the United States we take for granted for so many liberties that we have here, so many freedoms we take for granted, how about freedom to vote?
In the United States so many people take votes for granted, we are going to have election in June, this coming June 3rd, anybody is going to guess what is going to be the turnout? If you made a judge based on past history, we can look at say how many going to vote? In this election in June, about 40% will vote, 60% are not going to vote. In California, we have over 17 million voters, 60% of 17 million will be 10 million, and 10.2 million in California are not going to vote. Isn’t that crazy? Think about countries of the world people can’t vote or participate, and here you see people take it for granted, right, pretty sad. You look at your life and say well I wasn’t paying much attention until something bothered me, and then you kind wake up.
Well, let me just go back a few steps now; I got motivated by that subject of participation. I live in Contra Costa County, in the city of Orinda. I raised my family there. I have two daughters, one is still in college and the other one graduated from college and is working in SF. My wife works for AT&T, that’s our family. We moved here in 1996 from the Sacramento area. I raised my family here, public school.
I got involved in city politics in city council, and it has been over 10 years. One of my first things I did for government was in 1978, very long time ago, I decided that there was someone in politics that I liked a lot and I wanted to work for. Of course I didn’t know anything and they didn’t want to pay me any money, so I volunteered, and that person was Jerry Brown. He was running for election of governor first time in 1978 and I worked for his campaign. I felt politics and public policies were very interesting to me, so for the first 10 years out of college I stayed very involved in that world. I worked for different level of elected officials, I worked for state assemblies, and I worked for state senate. I was the spoke person for this chief justice of Supreme Court of California. The top judge needed some to speak for her so she hired me to speak for her for couple of years. So I have this different experience in government which allowed me to develop a lot of expertise and be able to advise companies and associations about politics/policy on how decisions get made.
Then I got phone call from Jerry Brow in 2009 who was the attorney general of CA, he said I am thinking of running for governor again, and I am interested to talk to you to see if you are interested in running my campaign for me. Because I had developed a lot expertise in this field, he asked me to come back to run his campaign for governor in 2010 which I did. We won the election against Meg Whitman. We were out spent by 130+ million dollar, we spent 35 million and she spent 179 million but we won the election. And that’s why he is the governor of CA today; he is a good friend of mine.
When I made decisions to run for the legislature I talked to him about it, whether it is a good thing for me to do for my career or not. One of the things he's realized and I have realized is that legislature is a very polarized place. Democrats and republicans looked at policies from great extremes, the way to the left and the way to the right, there were very few people that try to cross party lines and work out problems and find compromises and accommodations.
The reason why Jerry Brown gets a lot respect today is people say “He is the adult in the room". We as parents know what that means: kids can do crazy things and run around. He’s done a good job as a governor because he has brought discipline to the process. He is trying to find a way to operate in the middle, not one side or the other. No one was happy when he was cutting the budget. We don’t have the money and we can’t keep spending. There are people in Sacramento who want spend spend spend, tax tax tax. His view and my view were: We have finite amount of money; we have programs and priorities; we can’t go to taxpayers and ask for more money. You have to make tough decisions that people don’t want to make. So he shares my view of being fiscally conservative democrats. We are basically conservative democrats and that’s different than the typical democrats, we are not a product of any interest group from one side or the other.
Many of you have heard about my challenge with the party. When the Bart union was on strike, no one would stand up and say this is crazy, how can you go on strike, transit is the central service to the bay area, and it should not be able to shut it down, it is not private service, it is a public service, it was built by taxpayers, by people used the train, built by us, how can you have employees say we are going to shut down, hurt everyone that’s the examples of the extremes in our political system. If you have a fraction that is powerful, they can shut them down for their interest not for the common interest.
Jerry brown and I shared that view of the government, tried to build the center, tried to work with all the parties to share the view of being fiscal conservative, that with finite amount of money, let’s make sure we spend it well. We share the view that government does matter, it makes us safe, people do bad things and send them to jail, people with aspirations want to send their kids to the colleges, and then provide great university system at affordable price, so people can improve their life. We recognize the importance of K-12 education system so we have a lot of democratic value that we all should share and take care of each other, but we have fiscally conservative view that let’s make choices, let’s set priorities, let’s make sure every dollar spent well. So it is different definition of what is a democrat but it also creates exposure and vulnerability to the great power out there that wants you to be one corner or the other corner. There is very few people that you are trying to run down in the middle are saying that’s the best place to be, that is the uniqueness of my candidacy. I am a fiscal conservative democrat, in many ways, it does reflect my values. I think that is the place to be to make people’s life different, to make choices that last long time, not going from one side to the other side after the election.
So you get a sense of who I am and why I am running it. Anyway, that's some broad background about me. I care very much about our public school system, in many ways they are not working, in some ways they are working great. I think l love our teachers and they are under paid, I love the fact that there are some choices in public school, like charter schools for example. Parents should make some choices in where to send their kids school. We have a lot challenges in our schools. Need more money there. I love our public universities that bring opportunities to us. If you work hard, study hard, and excel there is a way for you to continue that growth in our public schools.
I think merit should be the driver of choices that university made in terms of who come in and merit should be the driver behind evaluating the public employees in terms of skills. I don't think it should be based on seniority.
Let me make one thing that created the cultural connection between us: my family is of Jewish heritage. Early in the America history there is a great deal against the Jewish community. The discrimination of university is to say we are only to allow a small number of Jews into the college, so for my father/grandfather, no matter how smart you were how skill for you were, we were going to create a quota system for Jews. That’s the way it was in the United States for a long time in our university system. That’s an example of unfairness and inequalities that we certainly never want to see and repeat again. We want merit to drive the choices that public institutions made. There have been discriminations and inequalities; we need to look for ways to take care of that, help that but not by discriminating against those who are still doing well. It should still be a merit based system.
With that I hope I have answered some question about me.
Stance on SCA5:
I didn’t think SCA5 was the right solution. There are groups in our society aren’t able to compete in the university systems. The solution is to help them gain better skill/understanding/knowledge, competition should be on a level plane, someone should not have a head start, against someone who is skilled and able to compete in our university
I am hoping one of the things you see about me is that I am very independent, most power in the democratic party is aligned against me, not for me. Labor community is most dominant and influential and endorses someone else. In fact UNIONs has spent 1 million to stop me. The party has not seen me as one of them. I am very independent minded, I am not wanting to be influenced by the power of the Democratic Party
There is a question on how can you be effective in the party? There are couple ways to look at that. The simplest way is that if I am elected state assembly, I am one of the 80 assembly members; no one will have better relation with the governor than me. The governor signs/vetoes every legislation, no one can replicate the decade long relationship that I have with Jerry Brown, that itself makes me very different than other members of legislature.
It is true some democrats won’t want work with me, but there will be republicans who will be willing to work with me. Some democrats will realize by aligning with me is aligning with the governor, aligning with a philosophy that is more enduring for betterment in California.
