Harman

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In advance of the June 2 primary, the Business Journal interviewed the four leading candidates for the Democratic and Republican nominations for governor on their reasons for running, their plans to promote California businesses and other issues. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Torrance, is the fourth and final candidate to appear in the series.

Question: Why are you running for governor?

Answer: I believe that my experience equips me best to maintain our state’s prosperity and to help every Californian share in it. These are not only right in moral and business terms, but they are also the right recipe to keep us ahead in the 21st century.

Q: Why are you more qualified than your opponents?

A: My mixture of experience, which is 15 years in the public sector and 15 years in the private sector, gives me better skills to do several things which are critical to the goals I just mentioned.

On the one hand, I understand how the private sector works. I respect the fact that the private sector is the engine of growth in our society. I also know that a government program won’t fix everything.

On the other hand, I know that there are critical roles for government, including providing a safety net for those who cannot function unassisted.

Q: What’s your take on Gray Davis and why, given his California government experience, you believe you are a better-qualified candidate than he is?

A: My take on him is that he has extensive experience in California state government, period.

Q: And is that a liability?

A: Well, it has its pluses. He is intimately familiar with business as usual in California state government. I hope we have a governor with broader experience who thinks out of the box, who is willing to challenge organized interests and come up with innovative solutions. At the state level, where you need a two-thirds majority to pass a budget, amend the constitution or do other important things, it requires a lot of innovation and courage.

Q: How about Al Checchi? He also calls himself an “outside-the-box” candidate. Why you are better-qualified than he is?

A: He has no government experience. He wears that like a mantra. But I think it will hamstring him. I also think our politics are not for sale. I recognize that I have had to loan my campaign substantial money. But I am also raising money. I have a record of raising all the money to run two of my three (previous) races, and I raised half the money I needed to run my first race.

My third comment on Checchi is that I am enormously disappointed in the type of campaign that he has run. He has no record, and he’s attacked people including me from every angle, without any reliance on a consistent set of principles. I don’t think that’s a model for a future governor.

Q: In the early months of your campaign, why did you choose to wait before articulating specific positions on the issues?

A: The early months? This whole campaign has been 10 minutes long. I’ve been saying that it took me 32 years between first going to the Democratic National Convention (in 1960) and running for Congress. It took 32 minutes between Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s decision not to seek the governor’s post to my decision to run for the post. This has been an enormously rapid experience. I have struggled with putting together a first-class organization, a fund-raising operation and addressing a huge range of issues, all the while attending to my responsibilities in Congress. And this has all occurred in three months. It’s a challenge to balance all those things. I’m now at full speed on all fronts.

Q: Rival campaigns suggest that your candidacy only came about because your campaign managers (Kam Kuwata and Bill Carrick) couldn’t get Sen. Feinstein or L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan to run.

A: That is absolutely, categorically false. It actually went the other way. I made a decision and then reached for them. Kam Kuwata has been my constituent for five-and-a-half years; he lives in Venice. And so, as I tell him all the time, he’s been extremely well-represented.

I had planned to support Dianne. She dropped out of the race. Numerous people congressional friends, local officials and California friends talked to me about it. The opportunity to add the kind of leadership I have described to you was enormous. I think politics is about public service. This was the most exciting possible opportunity to serve.

Q: Given that you say the private sector is the engine of economic growth, how do you intend to continue the economy moving along the path that it has been?

A: I would continue to spur private-sector growth by appreciating what is going well. Also, by aiding private-sector job creation. And by recognizing that regulatory reform and regulatory simplification are important in terms of keeping the cost of doing business down. Those reforms do not have to compromise important environmental standards, and other standards that government should set.

I would also make certain that our public education system is restored to the excellence that it represented when I went to school in California, when Pat Brown was governor, so that we produce workers with adequate skills to make 21st century products and render 21st century services in California.

Q: How much credit do you think Gov. Wilson should get for the economic turnaround?

A: He should get some credit. I think that the key change in the last five years was the balanced-budget environment in Washington. That started with the votes that only Democrats took for President Clinton’s 1993 budget. That was not the whole change, but that was where things began to turn around, where the market began to notice that we would not be forever deeper in debt. That vote depended on me and Congress members like me. Many members lost their seats in 1994 because of that vote; I won (my seat again in 1994) by 811 more votes than I needed. That was a brutal experience. Now Pete Wilson has understood how the state’s economy works and he has engaged in public-private partnerships. He made some late, but important, steps in reducing class size whether he did that to keep the money away from teacher’s unions, or whatever. He did it.

But he has in my mind made a critically catastrophic mistake: developing and championing divisive initiative measures, which have torn the state apart and added to the problem you just cited the spreading gap between the rich and the poor.

Q: On education, what are the two or three things you want to do to get better-trained workers?

A: I talk about education reform in terms of lifelong education. I want to fund early childhood development. That’s why I support the (Rob) Reiner initiative, which is going to qualify for the November ballot, which is a 50-cent-per-pack cigarette tax (with proceeds going toward) training parents in appropriate health care and early-learning skills. We’ve learned that 0 to 3 are critical years, in terms of a kid being successful in school and in life.

On K-12, I have proposed a series of reforms and how to pay for them. I would use the existing budget plus $400 million from the surplus, plus another 50-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes. So that would be a dollar-per-pack tax on cigarettes.

Among the other reforms I support: credentialing all teachers in five years; competency testing for kids and teachers on a periodic basis; current textbooks and computers in every classroom. On that point, I’ve called on Silicon Valley to provide some of the computer equipment both hardware and software at cost, which would be very helpful.

I also propose lengthening the school year and have also talked about a school construction bond, for both remodeling and new classrooms.

Q: Why have you come out against Proposition 227, the initiative that would ban bilingual education courses?

A: Because a one-size-fits-all strategy doesn’t work for every California community. You have lots of different language issues in California. There are 140 different languages spoken in California schools. The Hmong children in Fresno can’t be trained the same way as the Latino children in Los Angeles. I respect communities. I know that education is primarily a local function, and I want them to plot the strategy to make every child, every potential worker, proficient in English, which is the goal. That is why I support the alternative passed by the Legislature (but vetoed last week by Gov. Pete Wilson) that would allow individual school districts choice in how they address the issue.

Q: What is your position on Proposition 224, the initiative that tightens standards on contracting out-of-state engineering and design work?

A: I’m opposed to it. I have reviewed it carefully and I believe the proponents would create more bureaucracy and more delay in state construction projects. We can’t afford that. We have a massive backlog of infrastructure projects, especially seismic retrofitting, which can’t wait.

And, I’m for competition. I was for competition when I voted for telecommunications reform; I supported competition in banking reform. That helps the marketplace grow.

Q: How would you boost trade and increase California’s exports?

A: Trade is an increasing portion of our local economic growth. In Congress, I have been extremely supportive of trade agreements and strategies. I opposed NAFTA because I didn’t think it was a strong enough agreement. But otherwise, I supported Most Favored Nation (trading status for China) twice, I supported the Uruguay Round of GATT. I was the first (Congressional) supporter in L.A. County of “fast-track” trade legislation.

At the California level, I would also use my office to promote trade specifically with Mexico first, but then also with Asia.

Q: What is your take on health care reform in California?

A: Several things are improved. The HMO Commission report which I have yet to read is a constructive step. The governor is reorganizing the state government to look at HMOs, a good step. HMOs are here to stay. But they need to change substantially to restore the patient and doctor to the central focus. That’s why I support the HMO reforms in President Clinton’s Health Care Bill of Rights. The medical decisions should be made by doctors, not insurance companies.

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