John Garamendi has been seeking votes in California for well over 30 years. He first took a run for the Governor's mansion in 1982, and was set to do so again in 2010 until the seat in CA-10 opened up, and he was inspired to return to Washington, where he served in the Clinton Administration in the Department of the Interior. He has the most diverse record of anybody in the race, with stints at the federal level, the state legislature, and in two statewide offices, as the Insurance Commissioner and now Lieutenant Governor. In our interview, we discussed health care, lessons learned from regulating insurance, No Child Left Behind, saving the NUMMI plant in Fremont (more on that from Garamendi here), and foreign policy in Iran. I found Garamendi to come at issues in a very comprehensive and thoughtful way, and you can see this for yourself below. A paraphrased transcript follows. (flip it)
Mark DeSaulnier has had a rapid ascent through the state legislature and now, potentially, into Congress. Within three years, this former restaurant owner won elections to the State Assembly (in 2006) and the State Senate (in 2008), with a Congressional primary scheduled for September 1. Prior to that, he was a 3-time member of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and the California Air Resources Board. A former liberal Republican in the mold of Edward Brooke, DeSaulnier switched parties several years ago and compiled a liberal voting record in the State Legislature. His first ad of the campaign covered the topic of health care, and I asked him about this and several other issues in an interview conducted last week. Having taken place before the crucial budget vote, I spent a good deal of time asking DeSaulnier about that, and you can see his responses here. Depending on your perspective, he either did or did not fulfill the promise to vote against "most" of the budget, by the way, voting no on 11 of 26 bills, including all of the more controversial ones.
I'll pick up with a paraphrased transcript of the rest of the interview below:
The race in CA-10 for the seat vacated by Ellen Tauscher features three lawmakers with long resumes at the state level. And then there's Anthony Woods, a young man with no prior history in elected office, but festooned with what Benjy Sarlin of The Daily Beast called the best political resume ever. Woods is an African-American product of a single mother who found his way to West Point and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is a two-time Iraq war platoon leader who returned all of his men home safely and received the Bronze Star. He is someone who, after returning home, was dismissed from the Army for challenging its Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. But politicians don't vote with their resumes. They must have the conviction to vote with their principles. I actually conducted the first interview with Woods back in April, and since then others havetaken notice. So I thought I'd return to Woods and ask him about some of the key issues facing the Congress in the coming months. A paraphrased transcript of the conversation, executed last Wednesday, is below.
