Thursday, November 3, 2016

A Republican Dilemma: Furutani or Bradford?

In the Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lawndale regions of the South Bay, Republicans face a daunting dilemma.

Their state senate district, SD-35, draws up along the Alameda Corridor, from San Pedro to South Los Angeles. Compton and Carson round out the eastern section of the district.

Indeed, the district is heavily Democratic.

For Election 2016, the voters faced three Democrats and one Republican in the primary.

Now they have two choose between two liberal Democrats for state senate:

Warren Furutani or Steve Bradford.

What has happened to this region? Shouldn't voters get a real choice? Instead, it's Left and More Left.

This is not good.

So, what is to be done?

Steve Bradford is the machine pick. Furutani is the outsider ... of sorts. He has served on the Community College Board, the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education, and in the State Assembly.

Bradford sat on the Gardena City Council. He loves to tout that he was the first African-American elected to the Gardena City Council.

He also got into a fight with an ice cream truck driver.

Is this the kind of insanity that we need in Sacramento?

Bradford has also promoted redistribution of wealth on a number of flyers.

You can be sure that Bradford will be jumping for another office very soon.

When Maxine Waters retires--or dies in office--Bradford will be one of the candidates lining up to take her place in Washington DC. After all, that's what Isadore Hall did as soon as Janice Hahn announced that she was retiring from Congress (where she has to tolerate sitting in the minority).

So, what do you do?

If I lived in the district, I am not sure I would vote for either candidate.

They are just too liberal for me. They want to take people's guns away. They want to tax and spend  more of our money to redistribute to hard-core depends and create a generational funnel of votes to stay in power.

For all the Democratic dominance in the region, what do the residents of these communities have to show for their representatives' efforts?

This issue of constituent service is the dividing line for many prospective voters.

Elected officials in the region, and political pundits who follow the currents, say that Furutani is the slightly better choice than Bradford.

After all, the former Gardena Democrat has all the machine money behind. He does not need to network with voters in order to elections. Big Labor can roll out big money and hand him the seat.

Or at least that is what he thinks.

Lest I forget to mention ... Furutani represented Gardena in the state assembly, too.

Warren Furutani
More of a man of the people


He is the more "progressive" Democrat, the liberal without stops who will do everything in his power to ensure that the trees are protected, no matter what the cost. He is more like the Tea Party of the Left, principled, an ideologue in the mold of Barack Obama.

Steve Bradford is the Hillary Clinton candidate: all about the money, all about the power, all about himself.

And a lot of people do not like the man. Some officials have recounted to me the disrespect which they endured because of this man's selfish behavior. For now, I am merely recounting what they had shared with me.

I can say however, that I witnessed Bradford, a guess at one Democratic club meeting, spend a lot of time talking and taking the attention away from the invited guest speakers. Such behavior is unacceptable.

Among Democratic lawmakers, those motivated by principle, progressivism, or personal slights have lined up behind Furutani. 

If I were a Democrat, I would choose principle over moneyed power at any time.

The Japanese-American--educator as well as elected official--is more personable in general.

Voters and elected officials tell me that Furutani would answer their phone calls.

Furutani also attends public events. I saw him at the hearings focused on the Torrance Refinery. He also attended the swearing-in of new elected officials in Hawthorne, California following the November 2015 Elections.

He shows up to things. He answers people's phone calls. He is willing to talk to people.

If those issues matter to you, and you want to stop the Democratic political machine in its tracks, vote for Warren Furutani for State Senate.

This post does not serve as an overt endorsement, but rather a settlement of issues and values for anyone interested to determine their vote on November 8th.

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