A quartet of Republicans is campaigning for the chance to knock longtime Congressional representative Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) out of her 23rd District seat.
The candidates—John Davidson, Dave Stockdale, Clark Vandeventer, and Tom Watson—will match political wits at a public debate on April 25 at the Solvang Veterans Memorial Hall, 1745 Mission Dr., in Solvang.
The event will open with a “meet the candidates” opportunity at 1:30 p.m., followed by the debate from 2 to 4 p.m., which will be moderated by capolitical
news.com creator Stephen Frank.
The Sun recently talked to candidates Stockdale and Davidson about their platforms. Candidates Vandeventer and Watson were not available as of press time.
“The way to beat Lois Capps will be to meet her on the field of ideas and show that her ideas are old, tired, and wrong,” candidate Stockdale told the Sun. “We simply have to show that her ideas of [spending], jobs, and the Central Coast are wrong and we’ll win.”
Stockdale, who owns an insurance business in Santa Maria, said he believes strongly in cutting taxes and increasing national defense.
He also said he’s dedicated to creating more jobs and overall economic prosperity by increasing energy development of all kinds in the district, including green technology and oil and gas development off the Santa Barbara coast.
“The multiplier effect from these resources will create tens of thousands of jobs,” he said. “The entire country understands—or at least most of it understands—that America needs those resources. It’s just common sense.”
He said drilling for oil and increasing natural gas production will create not only industry jobs, but additional jobs through capital investment, as well as increased revenue.
“Those people will now have money to spend,” Stockdale said. “And I want to make sure that money will be used not for six-figure salaries, but to drive down developer fees and other business costs.”
When asked if his stance could be a tough sell to the district—especially considering Santa Barbara’s longstanding opposition to drilling—Stockdale said: “It’s foolish to pay more than we should for [energy] resources because of an oil spill that happened 40 years ago.”
Over those 40 years, there have been technological advancements made to prevent oil spills, he explained.
Another key issue in Stockdale’s platform is illegal immigration.
“It’s an issue that we must face head-on. We need to stop pushing it under the rug,” he said.
To stop illegal immigration, Stockdale said, America needs to “seal its borders, stop giving government handouts, and make it virtually impossible for [an illegal immigrant] to get a job.”
“Most of the mechanisms are in place, we just need the resolve to carry it out,” he said.
While Stockdale admits that completely sealing the border is “virtually impossible,” he said “we have to make an attempt” to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country.
To prevent illegal immigration, Stockdale proposes increasing electronic surveillance at the border and “removing the incentives: jobs and government handouts.”
Davidson, who lives in Thousand Oaks, also owns his own insurance firm, and is committed to creating more local jobs.
“I’ve visited small business owners all over the district to talk to them about the kinds of problems they encounter that keep them from hiring people,” he said, adding that one of the most frequent answers he hears is taxes.
Based on this knowledge, Davidson said, if elected, he would consider creating a temporary payroll tax stimulus for small businesses and decreasing the individual tax rate by as much as 10 percent.
“That would allow nine out of 10 people to keep more of what they earn,” he said.
“The business tax in this country is outrageous,” he continued. “We need to focus on keeping jobs in America and stop outsourcing jobs and sending money out across the water.”
In addition to taxes, Davidson said there should be fewer business regulations hindering economic prosperity.
Another government function that Davidson said is out of control? Spending.
“There is a current debt of $111,000 per taxpayer because of how our tax dollars are being spent,” he said. “I have five grandchildren who have already inherited that without having jobs. I take exception to that.”
That debt, he said, comes from a lack of oversight to where that money is allocated, using President Barack Obama’s “Cash for Clunkers” program to illustrate his point.
“That program cost us $3 billion,” he said, adding that it only generated about $350 million. “That’s $8.50 for every dollar we saved. … In the business world, the people in charge of that would have been fired.
“I think you can point to both sides of the aisle for these problems,” he continued. “There are plenty of programs out there that have gone past their effectiveness.”
To cut down on the pork barrel spending, Davidson said he would support the enforcement of a line-item veto for non-essential legislation.
For more information about the candidates’ campaigns, visit davidson4congress.com or stockdaleforcongress.com.
To RSVP for the debate, e-mail FreedomRallies@gmail.com.
This article appears in Apr 8-15, 2010.