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Alpine man
to run for District 77 race
By Christy Scott
The Alpine Sun
ALPINE — As Alpine’s registered Republicans cast their votes in the 77th State Assembly district primary for the November 2006 federal election, they will likely see a name they recognize — that of their Alpine neighbor Joel Anderson. As term limits close the door on state Assemblyman Jay La Suer's tenure in Sacramento this year, four Republicans already are jockeying to succeed him.
Anderson, a resident of Alpine since 1988, is a local elected official, businessman, husband, and father, who has served San Diego for over 25 years as a pro-business, pro-family, and anti-tax community activist. Anderson, 45, is conservative on abortion, gun ownership, taxes, spending, and same-sex marriage.
He currently serves as the president of the Padre Dam Board of Directors, representing 124,000 ratepayers. He was first elected to the Padre Dam Board of Directors in 2002 when he defeated a 12-year incumbent. According to Anderson, questionable spending spurred him to run for a seat on the water district in Santee four years ago.
“It's amazing to me that people don't have any clarity when it comes to other people's money. How can we expect to hold our employees and staff to a high standard if we are not able to live at that standard?” Anderson asked.
Anderson first vied for a seat on the State Assembly in 1998, running in the 75th District. After losing the bid to Republican Charlene Zettel — who garnered 34 percent of the vote, over his 24 percent — Anderson dusted himself off and worked to elect Dennis Hollingsworth to the California Senate in 2002.
“I also served as chairman for “Kill the Car Tax” and later I was the coalition chair to re-elect President Bush,” Anderson said. “I've been busy working for tax groups and pro-life organizations this whole time.”
Anderson was one of East County's biggest campaigners for the Governor’s Proposition 73, which dealt with parental notification for teenage girls seeking to get an abortion. The state proposition failed during the November 2005 election with only 47.2 percent of voters in support and 52.8 percent in opposition.
If elected, Anderson says he would meet with other legislators to try to reallocate state funding from Los Angeles and San Francisco and toward San Diego. That would help pay for roads and education in the area without raising taxes, he said.
“One of my goals is to work with all of the local boards to make sure that good people are there,” he said. “I'm currently the president of the Padre Dam Municipal Water Board, and before I was on the board, they were proposing $78 million in additional debt. Since I joined the board, we've eliminated a lot of it.”
Anderson said he is a strong supporter of transparency at all levels of government.
“When I joined the water board, if there was a rate increase, they would do the minimum that the law required, which was posting the increase on the front door of the building. No one is going to drive by the water board and look for increases,” he said. “So one time I sent postcards at my own expense to every registered voter in the district telling them to show up at this meeting. The reason for all of this is that I wanted transparency in government.”
“Now every ratepayer is notified through the district. I was able to change that policy, and it wasn't easy,” Anderson said. “Everybody hated me, and all the quotes were about how I was an evil person. But I went from being on the board minority to being in the board majority and now I'm the president after only three years. It would have been helpful if the local legislators had been working to fill these boards with responsible people.”
The criticism that annoys Anderson the most is that he is not conservative enough.
“I've been accused of supporting needle exchanges and being pro-homosexual. Neither charge is remotely close to the truth,” Anderson said. These charges were raised when Anderson voiced his support in a San Diego City Council race, for Phil Thalhaimer. Thalhaimer recently chose to march in the Gay Pride Parade, which did not sit well with many of his peers.
“When I said I supported Phil, we never discussed that issue and I didn't know he was going to walk in that parade. I supported him because the city is in financial upheaval and Phil is good with financial issues,” Anderson said. “That doesn't mean I support the gay agenda, but I'm not going to turn around and say I'm only going to support people who are 100 percent like me. In some instances, you have to support the best candidate and my critics have chosen to make this a big issue.”
“My positions have not changed and it does a huge disservice when people take one item and make broad extrapolations from that one item. If you used the 100 percent criteria, then I couldn't support President Bush because he hasn't fully understood our border issues.”
Anderson believes such guilt by association tactics are common from candidates who know how to attack, but have never had to build a coalition.
“People are complex. There is a lot of gray, and it is not all as easy as it seems,” Anderson said. “I've never gotten personal with anyone or done anything that would hurt my relationship with anyone, so that later on, my opponents could feel comfortable agreeing with me if it was the right thing.”
Assembly District 77 encompasses East San Diego County, including Alpine, Borrego Springs, Boulevard, Campo, Dulzura, El Cajon, Guatay, Jacumba, Jamul, Julian, La Mesa, Lakeside, Pine Valley, Potrero, Ramona, San Diego, Santee, and Tecate.
According to the California Secretary of State, of the district’s 217,662 registered voters, 47 percent, are Republican, 30 percent are Democrat, and 19 percent, support third parties or declined to state.
Four Republicans will take part in the primary for this seat: Nancy Lee Beecham, Jack Dale, Debbie Beyer, who has the support of incumbent La Suer, and Anderson.
Also running for the seat is Libertarian candidate Rich Belitz. No Democrat candidates have filed to run in the solidly Republican district, according to state campaign filings. The primary, a key test, will be June 6, the general election, on Nov. 7.
Since the 77th Assembly District is overwhelmingly conservative, Anderson thinks the right assembly member could make the difference in getting more conservatives elected to other state offices, “if the assembly member takes an interest in more local races,” Anderson explains. “It's not just about going to Sacramento to be a good vote, it's about leadership in the community.
Anderson has garnered support from many powerful Republican officials including Del Albright and author of the Border-Police Initiative Ray Haynes, former Assemblyman Steve Baldwin, Senator Bill Morrow, Assemblyman Tim Leslie, and over 200 others.
At a rally held last Sunday, March 5, Anderson announced that he has also received the endorsement of Senator Tom McClintock.
Also at the rally, co-founder of the national Minuteman Organization, Chris Simcox, also voiced his support for Anderson, as the guest speaker at the afternoon event.
Simcox flew in specifically to speak at the rally about illegal immigration and to publicly endorse Anderson.
“Human and drug smuggling is alive and well in this country and along this border, and we have become a watchdog group for border security and seeing what the Border Patrol is doing wrong,” Simcox said. “I support Joel and his efforts to make securing the borders job number one.”
Anderson added that he is pleased to have the support of the Minuteman leader: “Chris Simcox has dedicated his career to ending the illegal alien problem. It is paramount that we secure our border and protect our families from the perils of illegal immigration and the drug trade that stems from it."
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Simcox:
Border control is the issue in 2006
By Billie Jo Jannen
The Alpine Sun
SANTEE — Border control is the big issue in this year’s elections and Minuteman Civil Defense Corps co-founder Chris Simcox is among the scores of border activists who plan to make the most of it.
“This issue will determine who gains office...in 2006 through 2008,” Simcox said in an exclusive interview with
The Alpine Sun. “Joel is a candidate who ‘gets it.’”
Among the chief goals of border control proponents throughout the Southwest is to get the type of border roads and fencing found in San Diego County, according to
Simcox, who attended Joel Anderson’s District 77 campaign kick-off last Sunday.
We would like to see that (fence) replicated in other areas along the border,” he said. “You have a shorter length of border...and fewer Border Patrol agents, but there seems to be a lot more infrastructure.”
Simcox said he supports Anderson’s bid for the District 77 California Assembly seat because Anderson has been a longtime supporter of efforts to get more agents, more infrastructure and better enforcement in general on the US/Mexico border.
Anderson is, by no means, the only candidate that Simcox is publicly supporting. A growing group of candidates coast to coast have earned his endorsement, he said. These include former Yonkers mayor John Spencer, running against Hillary Clinton for a New York Senate seat, Howard
Kaloogian, running for U.S. Congress in District 50, and House of Representatives candidate Robert Vasquez of Idaho.
In short, Simcox is all over the map in the 2006 races and said the Border Patrol and interior enforcement share
one common theme everywhere:
“The Border Patrol is out-manned, outgunned, and out-resourced by smugglers,” he said. “They run circles around the Border Patrol.”
Simcox, who has traveled to communities all along the border, said this resource shortage is the chief common denominator throughout the border states.
Another common denominator is a growing willingness by fed up property owners to take on enforcement tasks that Border Patrol doesn’t have the manpower to do — something that rural East County residents have been doing since 1992:
“They stop people and tell them to sit down until Border Patrol arrives,” he said. “It’s a whole different world when you’re working on your own property, or with permission from the property owner.”
In contrast, border watch volunteers must be much more “hands-off,” confining their activities to watching for northbound groups and reporting their numbers and location to U.S. Border Patrol agents.
“There’s only one way you do the job,” he said of the operating rules developed by MCDC and Minuteman Project held last summer in
Arizona. “If they follow the model, they’ll be successful and still stay within the law.”
In fact, most border watch groups follow this very procedure, or some variation of it, even when they are on private property.
An Internet search now turns up dozens of state groups, including such states as Tennessee and Georgia, where the impacts of illegal immigration are making themselves felt in rural and construction jobs traditionally held by residents. Most are affiliated with the original
MCDC, with the exception of Jim Chase’s California Minutemen and the Texas Minutemen:
“There are groups that want to be independent,” Simcox said. “They want to make their own SOP and don’t want to be associated with a national group.”
Chris Simcox
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