{"id":37166,"date":"2021-06-30T16:36:50","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T23:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=37166"},"modified":"2021-06-30T16:36:50","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T23:36:50","slug":"three-california-republicans-share-views-on-future-of-gop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=37166","title":{"rendered":"THREE CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS SHARE VIEWS ON FUTURE OF GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by\u00a0Jenny Manrique<\/a><\/span>\u00a0|\u00a0Jun 30, 2021<\/span>\u00a0|\u00a0Politics<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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From left to right: Young Kim, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, California\u2019s 39th District; Suzette Martinez Valladares, Member of the California State Assembly, 38th District; Walter Allen III, City Councilmember, City of Covina<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Also available in\u00a0Spanish<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Members of the Republican Party in California share their views on why they believe they offer the best representation for ethnic Americans.<\/em><\/p>\n

By: Jenny Manrique<\/strong><\/p>\n

In an overwhelmingly blue state where according to the California Public Policy Institute, the majority of African American, Latino and AAPI voters are Democrats, Republicans flipped four districts in the last congressional election with minority candidates.<\/p>\n

According to the new faces, their agendas seek to \u201craise the conservative voices\u201d of minorities, and find \u201cbipartisan consensus\u201d to legislate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Republican Party for me, is not the great old party, but the great opportunity party,\u201d said Young Kim, US representative to the CA 39th District, which includes Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange County, one of the most diverse districts in the country where Joe Biden won by 10 points.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsian Americans should not automatically be considered as members of the Democratic Party. We have our voices, we have our shared values, we have our conservative views.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim is an immigrant from South Korea, mother of four children, and one of four Korean-Americans who were sworn into the 117th Congress. She is also one of 11 Republican women who flipped a Democratic seat in the last election, and who was recently ranked as the most bipartisan freshmen in Congress.<\/p>\n

One of her bills approved with Democratic support was the Paycheck Protection Program Extension Act that gives small business owners two more months to access unspent funds from that program in order to keep their doors open and their employees on payroll. \u201cThat small extension allows 2.7 million small businesses to receive $54 billion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She also supports legislation that provides a permanent solution to DACA recipients and to foreign students who get their education at US universities, but cannot adjust their status to stay in the country. \u201cAs we talk about immigration reform, I would like to see separate legislation to fix DACA,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While she supports Biden\u2019s $ 1.2 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill, she disagrees that the $1.9 trillion budget to deal with COVID-19 is redirected to other purposes, \u201csuch as caring for migrants who are in the community\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the work of Congress will play a large role in dictating our future,\u201d Kim said. \u201cAnd by getting the government out of the way and making life more affordable for workers and families, we can get our economy and our lives back on track.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daughter of farm workers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Suzette Mart\u00ednez Valladares, who represents District 38 in the California State Assembly, which encompasses the northwestern suburbs of Los Angeles, Ventura County, the Santa Clarita Valley and Simi Valley, is also faithful to her party\u2019s fiscal conservatism.<\/p>\n

Martinez is the only Latina Republican in the assembly. She says that Governor Gavin Newsom\u2019s policies \u201care crushing the middle class\u201d and that the handling \u201cof the lockdown and closures had little to no guidance\u201d so that \u201cour businesses are going at an alarmingly negligent pace\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Assemblywoman is co-sponsoring bill 420 which seeks to adjust state guidelines to allow amusement parks, regardless of size, to be opened safely. Her interest comes from her first work experience at Six Flags Magic Mountain where she started as a summer intern, to end up working 8 years later as an asset protection and loss prevention investigator.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been a clear mismanagement for so many industries that have been shuttered and closed for over a year\u2026 1.2 million Californians have not accessed EDD (unemployment benefits), and the distribution of vaccines has been a debacle,\u201d Martinez said, although official data showed that California has the highest percentage of vaccinations in the country.<\/p>\n

Born in the San Fernando Valley, her grandparents came from Mexico to work in the fields of Kern County. Every summer her father, who was born in Puerto Rico, would pick crops with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout my life my parents taught me the value of hard work. My dad said that I didn\u2019t have to be the smartest person in the room, but the hardest working person in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez said that she experienced extreme poverty while in high school, and that she witnessed a lot of crime and drugs in her neighborhood. \u201cI looked around me and all of my representatives were Democrats who were supposed to be the party that supported minorities and the poor. Why was I not seeing change in my own community? That forced me to look at the Republican Party,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Public safety<\/strong><\/p>\n

Walter Allen III, a Covina city council member for more than 20 years, said that although he did not consider himself a political person and was basically a \u201cnon-partisan person,\u201d having worked with different law enforcement agencies inclined him to join the GOP \u201cfor its platform on public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the major concerns I have as a local elected official is exactly public safety \u2026 and it doesn\u2019t make any difference whether you are Republican or Democrat, I am concerned about the notion of defunding the police,\u201d said the African-American councilmember who is also the director of the Rio Hondo Police Academy.<\/p>\n

Born in East Oakland, where he witnessed \u201chigh crime rates,\u201d Allen believes that perceptions about the police stem from many people not paying attention to data. \u201cIt is victims, crime reports and issues that deal with crime that disproportionately send police into communities of color,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd for some reason, people think that police officers run around, making their point to target Blacks or Latinos, and that\u2019s simply not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen condemned the murder of African American George Floyd at the hands of Officer Derek Chauvin as a \u201chorrible thing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know of any police officer that wasn\u2019t sickened by that,\u201d he said. But he quoted various figures according to which out of 1,000 people who were shot last year, about 235 were black and \u201cmost of those people were armed and dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The council member said that in his academy, 80% of the officers he trains belong to minorities and that the training is focused on de-escalation techniques, how to deal with the mental health of the homeless population, and cultural diversity. \u201cAs a mandatory requirement they have to go to the Museum of Tolerance for a day of cultural diversity training,\u201d he assured. \u201cWe train officers how to be guardians, not warriors,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Allen believes that his party must constantly reach out to communities of color and not just during election season. \u201cUnfortunately, a lot of Republicans are leaving the state. But I\u2019m optimistic if we continue with the grassroots effort, we can gain some folks of color into the party,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Jenny Manrique\u00a0|\u00a0Jun 30, 2021\u00a0|\u00a0Politics From left...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37167,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37166\/revisions\/37167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}