There was a bogeyman at Republican Rep. Mike Garcia’s city corridor in Santa Clarita this week: the state of California.
Onstage on the Performing Arts Heart at School of the Canyons, Garcia spoke in entrance of a big display projecting the red-lettered phrases: “My mission is to forestall the U.S. from adopting California’s excessive insurance policies.”
Garcia blasted California’s gasoline costs, its homelessness disaster, housing prices that are about double the nationwide common. And he blamed all of it on the Democratic supermajority in Sacramento.
“I need to be very clear, as a result of this has been misinterpreted previously: I really like California,” Garcia mentioned. “It’s why I’m right here. It’s the place I’ve raised my household. It’s the place I used to be raised. I’ve no intentions of leaving California, however, boy, does Sacramento make it arduous to remain in California.”
Then, he added: “My job is to forestall the nation from turning into what California has turn out to be.”
The packed auditorium burst into applause.
Decrying the price of fuel and housing within the Golden State is a potent message in Garcia’s sprawling district in northern Los Angeles County. Many residents right here endure two-hour commutes to jobs in Los Angeles as a result of they needed to relocate to the excessive desert to discover a residence they might afford.
On Tuesday night time, Garcia, a thrice-elected Republican working for reelection in one of many state’s best congressional races, held courtroom for greater than three hours throughout his city corridor. As a result of he was there in his official position as a congressman, Garcia didn’t communicate straight in regards to the election. His spokespeople haven’t responded to a number of requests from The Instances to debate the marketing campaign.
In a prolonged question-and-answer session, constituents on the discussion board made their considerations clear: public security, the price of dwelling, higher well being advantages for veterans, and the tradition wars in California’s public colleges, particularly relating to gender id points.
Garcia, a former Navy pilot, is going through a troublesome reelection bid to characterize the twenty seventh Congressional District, the place Democrats maintain a big benefit in voter registration.
The race between him and his Democratic opponent, George Whitesides, a former NASA chief of workers beneath President Obama, will probably be essential in figuring out whether or not Republicans keep their slender majority within the U.S. Home. The Prepare dinner Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, calls this yr’s race a toss-up.
“A few of you need me to be additional proper. A few of you need me to be additional left. I’m who I’m, and I imagine what I imagine,” GOP Rep. Mike Garcia instructed a packed city corridor in Santa Clarita.
(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Instances)
The as soon as staunchly conservative district stretches from Santa Clarita to the Kern County line and consists of Lancaster and Palmdale. With its proximity to Edwards Air Pressure Base, it has deep ties to the army and aerospace trade.
Simply over 41% of registered voters are Democrats, and about 30% are Republicans. Greater than a fifth are independents
Garcia, 48, first received his seat throughout a 2020 particular election to interchange former Rep. Katie Hill, a younger Democrat who resigned amid a intercourse scandal. It was the primary time the GOP had flipped a California district from blue to crimson in additional than 20 years.
Garcia retained the seat in two subsequent elections. And he received final spring’s three-way major election with 55% of the vote, whereas Whitesides bought 33%, setting the stage for the highest two vote-getters to face off within the November runoff.
Whitesides, a former chief govt of Mojave-based Virgin Galactic, is a first-time candidate who has blasted Garcia’s vote towards certifying the 2020 presidential election outcomes after the Jan. 6 revolt, and his 2021 co-sponsorship of the Life at Conception Act, which might have amounted to a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or threats to the mom’s well being.
Onstage Tuesday, Garcia mentioned, “By way of get together affiliation, I’m within the minority — I perceive that.
“A few of you need me to be additional proper. A few of you need me to be additional left. I’m who I’m, and I imagine what I imagine,” he mentioned.
Garcia is the son of a Mexican immigrant who moved to the U.S. in 1959. He mentioned that his late father “got here right here legally” and “did it proper” and that unlawful immigration is likely one of the nation’s greatest threats. In Congress, he voted towards making a path to citizenship for so-called Dreamers who had been dropped at the U.S. as youngsters.
Garcia referred to as for greater pay and extra go away time for members of the army — drawing cheers from a crowd full of veterans.
“You’ve bought to pay them higher. You’ve bought to steer them higher, and also you’ve bought to spend money on the army industrial advanced that helps them and provides our conflict fighters the … benefit that they, frankly, deserve abroad and at residence,” mentioned Garcia, a former govt for protection contractor Raytheon.
“As individuals who have a coronary heart for patriotism and a love of this nation,” one girl requested Garcia, “what can we do to revive patriotism in our colleges?”
Garcia, a father of two, mentioned politics wanted to remain out of public colleges and blasted a new state regulation that bans colleges from enacting insurance policies that require lecturers to inform mother and father about adjustments to a pupil’s gender id — for instance, in the event that they ask to be referred to as by a unique title or pronoun.
“For each invoice like this one in Sacramento, there’s an unpleasant twin sister in Washington, D.C.,” he mentioned. “And my job is to be sure that twin doesn’t get allowed to be signed into regulation and that California doesn’t successfully turn out to be the norm all through your entire nation.”
The night did embrace one tense change. Garcia had instructed the gang that he co-sponsored a reauthorization of the Violence In opposition to Ladies Act, a landmark 1994 regulation offering assist for victims of home violence and sexual assault.
“It is a massive deal. Not very many Republicans are on this Violence In opposition to Ladies Act, and I’m proud to be a co-sponsor,” Garcia mentioned.
However in 2021, Garcia voted towards one other reauthorization measure, as conservatives protested provisions that expanded protections for LGBTQ+ individuals and tightened gun entry for individuals convicted of abusing or stalking a relationship accomplice.
As a substitute, Garcia co-sponsored a failed Republican-led different to resume the act for one yr, minus the brand new provisions. He was not a co-sponsor of the compromise invoice that handed the next yr as a part of a broader spending bundle.
Megan Johnson, an 18-year-old from Santa Clarita who will probably be voting for the primary time this fall, referred to as out the discrepancy.
“You voted towards renewing the act. Is that this the identical act you discuss co-sponsoring in your slideshow?” she requested him.
Garcia mentioned that he supported “a pure model” of the Violence In opposition to Ladies Act, and that the model he voted towards “ended up unintentionally depriving different individuals of their constitutional rights because of the safety of ladies who’ve been the victims of violence.”
Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee, described Garcia’s illustration of his vote as “a brand new low.”
“The reality Mike Garcia apparently can’t bear to confess is that he voted to dam the reauthorization of the Violence In opposition to Ladies Act in 2021 — a transfer that risked gutting funding to enhance legal justice responses to sexual assault, home violence and stalking, and reducing the provision of providers for victims and survivors throughout California,” Gottlieb mentioned.
Outdoors the auditorium, Johnson, a registered Democrat, mentioned that the congressman didn’t totally reply her query and that she could be voting for Whitesides.
Along with girls’s security and reproductive rights, she mentioned she cares most on this election about gun reform, a problem that hits near residence in Santa Clarita: In 2019, a pupil at Saugus Excessive opened hearth in a crowded quad, killing two classmates and injuring three others earlier than killing himself.
“Rising up within the era that needed to do lively coaching shootings … it’s triggered, actually, lots of worry,” she mentioned. “I’ve nightmares about mass shootings.”
As she left the auditorium, Trish Lester, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clarita Valley Republican Ladies, mentioned she revered Garcia for explaining his vote to Johnson and favored every part he needed to say.
Carrying a shirt that mentioned, “My Governor is an Fool,” Lester mentioned she agreed with Garcia that California has turn out to be too excessive and too costly.
Lester and her husband, an Military veteran, “supported his marketing campaign from the very first day,” she added. “It was apparent that he was a category act, that this was a person who was an actual patriot, together with his army service and his enterprise expertise.
“I’m very happy with Mike,” she mentioned.
