FLASHREPORT

UNION MAILERS MISS THEIR TARGETS

Cameron Smyth, Chairman, Assembly Republican Caucus

[Publisher's Note:  The 2010 election season is well underway.  Using the current budget battle as their public foil, a coalition of public employee unions has started dropping attack mailers into the districts of Assembly Republicans.  Ostensibly their purpose is to influence the votes of Republican legislators on budget issues.  But it doesn't take much political sophistication to understand that the real goal is to "take out" three more Republicans and give the union-controlled Democrats a supermajority in the Assembly.  Assemblyman Cameron Smyth has penned an exclusive column for the FlashReport, which appears below.  There have been four union-paid-for campaign mail pieces that have dropped in his district.  You can see .pdf versions of those pieces here -- 150k IHSS CAR EDUCATION - Flash]

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Over the last several weeks, eight Republican legislators including myself have been the targets of political mailers deriding us for advocating budget cuts while opposing tax increases.  My colleagues who have also been targeted include Assemblymembers Paul Cook, Nathan Fletcher, Martin Garrick, Danny Gilmore, Steve Knight, Brian Nestande and Van Tran.  Most of these mailers have been funded by a group calling itself the Fair Budget Coalition, which is actually a conglomerate of public employee unions including home health care workers and teachers.  The mailers are designed to bully Republicans into voting for taxes.

One mail piece in particular chastises several of us for supporting cuts to the education budget.  We’re painted as villains for suggesting that we need to cut waste and inefficiency from the education budget.  While unions attacking Republicans for trying to cut down their money tree is nothing new, it still surprises me that the 44 Democrats who joined us in supporting education cuts have been left alone by the same groups that are targeting me and my colleagues.  The Fair Budget Coalition doesn’t seem very fair when it comes to who they choose to attack.

(In a truly ironic twist, as a college professor and member of the California Faculty Association, my wife’s union dues are paying for these attacks against me!)

Another mailer attacks Republicans for supporting cuts to the In Home Support Services (IHSS) program, which in many cases pays people to take care of their own family members.  What the mailer doesn’t mention is that IHSS is a program that is rife with fraud and abuse.  It also doesn’t mention that Democrats have balked at any attempt to reform IHSS – including the simple action of requiring IHSS workers and recipients to be fingerprinted.  Perhaps we wouldn’t need to make such large cuts to the program if there were safeguards in place to make sure that IHSS funds were being spent efficiently on people who are truly in need.

My message to the Fair Budget Coalition, to my constituents, and to the people of California has been clear from my first day in office.  I do not support tax increases.  The unions have flooded mailboxes in my district with four separate attack mailers.  They can send four hundred mailers, and I will not vote to raise taxes.  If their goal was to shame me into supporting tax increases and drive a wedge into our caucus, they failed.  My resolve has only been strengthened by the overwhelming response I’ve received from my constituents – they want me to hold the line, oppose additional taxes, and make the difficult cuts that are necessary to restore California’s reputation as the Golden State.  That’s exactly what my colleagues and I plan to do.

Last month, I wrote about this being an opportunity for us to affect long-term change by changing the way California handles budgeting.  A key part of that change is implementing reforms throughout government to make sure that we don’t burden tomorrow’s legislators with today’s problems.  It is shortsighted for Democrat leadership to suggest that we need to focus on the current $26 billion deficit without also discussing reforms that will save the state billions of dollars in future years, such as pension reform and educational funding flexibility.  The “tax and spend” mantra of the Democrats is played out, and now taxpayers want real reform and real cuts.  The sooner the Democrats realize that, the sooner we can solve California’s budget crisis.
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Assembly Republican Caucus Chairman Cameron Smyth, R-Santa Clarita, represents the 38th Assembly District in the California Legislature. 

You can e-mail Assemblyman Smyth, via the FR, here.