Agricultural Heartland of California

Excerpted from the Benecia Herald "Connor: County needs ‘purple’ representative" Oct. 13:

The top three issues in Michelle Connor’s bid for the 8th District California Assembly seat: Jobs, jobs and jobs.

“If you don’t have a job, you can’t put food on the table,” said Connor, a Republican who is challenging incumbent Democrat Mariko Yamada.

A former Assembly campaign manager and field director for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 re-election, Connor links jobs, the economy and California’s struggle with its budget and said jobs need to be created “so the economy can get healthier.”

The Vacaville resident knows people in both major parties. As a political science major, she has interned with U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez... Later she switched parties and became what she calls “a libertarian Republican,” interning with U.S. Rep. Doug Ose, the Republican who represented the 3rd District...

From her campaign website:

California’s economic woes have risen largely out of economic irresponsibility on the part of the Legislature’s mismanagement of the budget due to one party rule. Sacramento’s answer to the problems that face our state is to continually pass bills and fund programs that spend money, drain the economy and do not fix California’s growing list of problems.

The budget as a whole needs to be evaluated from the top, down, and ineffectual expenditures need to be eliminated.

A budget cap would help to keep the expenditures from outweighing the state revenue for the fiscal year.

California’s government is overflowing with bureaucratic boards filled by appointments given by the governor and legislators. These non-elected appointees hold the power to create bureaucratic nightmares over the lives of California citizens. The members of these boards facilitate the social regulations that cost the state millions of taxpayer dollars a year, and push small and large businesses out of California. The boards need to be made culpable for their actions, and in many cases, they need to be consolidated. We need to see if it is feasible to consolidate duplicated jobs across state agencies and combine agencies that have similar missions.

Photos of Connor from campaign website, campaigning at Solano County Fair.