In 2008, Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson lost her bid for the 19th State Senate District seat against incumbent Tony Strickland by a half a percentage point.


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In 2010, Republican Mike Stoker ran an unsuccessful bid for election against Das Williams for the 35th Assembly District.

Enter – or exit – current state Sen. Strickland, who has opened the state Senate seat in a bid for Congress.

The 19th district spans portions of three counties, including all of Santa Barbara County, and is evenly split among Democrats, Republicans and Declined-to-State voters. Redistricting has opened up some new opportunities for Republicans concentrating on preventing a Democratic super-majority in the state Legislature.

Jackson, who left the state Assembly in 2004 after serving six years, hopes to snag the seat after nudging out Democrat Jason Hodge in the June primary with 40% of the vote. She now finds herself in a two-way race with Stoker, who took 45.6% of the vote. In an interview following the primary results, Jackson told the Journal that she and Hodge, who took 13.5%, effectively split the Democratic vote.

Stoker told a different story: “A lot of Hodge’s message was our message, and polling showed almost 80% of his vote would go to us. I think if we run the campaign we’re capable of and stay on message, then we’ll do well.”

If doing well boils down to money, then Stoker faces an uphill battle against Jackson, who has outraised him by a ratio of about 3-to-1.

Jackson raised $304,000 over the summer and spent $308,000, ending September with $135,000. Stoker raised $101,000 and spent $151,000, finishing with an $85,000 war chest.

A former county supervisor and an attorney whose practice emphasizes land use, Stoker is running on a platform of budget and regulatory reform, promising to both get the state’s fiscal house in order. The Camarillo native said he wants to consolidate and eliminate 5,800 existing state departments, agencies boards and commissions.

Stoker served on the county Board of Supervisors from 1986-1994; the Majority Counsel to the Republican Party in Congress, where he was assigned to the Government Reform & Oversight Committee; and as Chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

Stoker pointed out that in his bid for the 35th Assembly District, he lost by only 7.5% in a district in which Democrats enjoyed a 20-percent registration advantage and one that did not encompass Republican strongholds in northern Santa Barbara County. Stoker has been endorsed by mayors from Solvang, Lompoc and Santa Maria.

Jackson has made education and the environment the centerpieces of her campaign. Education, in particular, is the state’s asset that will set the foundation for the economy to flourish, she said.

“We need to restore adequate funding to all our schools,” Jackson said in a recent interview. “We need to prioritize our spending so that education is at the top of the list in order to ensure quality and accessible education is available at all levels.”

In the state assembly, Jackson authored the “Teacher Retention Bill” as a means of teacher retention and recruitment. The bill gave credentialed teachers tax credits based upon their years of service. She said in the state senate she would continue to focus on smaller class sizes, up-to-date materials, and encouraging successful teaching methods.

Jackson’s legislative work includes serving as chair of the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources and chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Coastal Protection. She also served as chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus and was chair of the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee from 1999-2002. She served on a number of standing committees, including the Budget Committee, Judiciary Committee and the Higher Education Committee.

Jackson said that Sacramento has failed to re-prioritize and invest in education, short-changing the workforce by eliminating programs, limiting access and classes within the state’s community colleges.

“California is known as the ‘state that invents the future’ because we are innovators with access to the best public universities in the world,” she explained. “For decades, our education system has provided the well-trained workforce necessary to draw the businesses wanting to tap into the infrastructure, research institutions, and innovators of tomorrow. However, in recent years, we have not made education a priority, and with the rising cost of tuition, we have essentially placed a tax on our students that limits their opportunity to achieve their potential and generate the kinds of high-paying jobs that grow our economy.”

Gov. Brown has kicked his campaign into high gear for Proposition 30, which would shore up education costs by raising the sales tax by one-fourth cent for four years, and by increasing the income tax for those earning more than $250,000 per year. Brown has stated that the revenue will prevent $6 billion in immediate cuts to California schools. Jackson called Prop. 30 the “best solution we have at this time to stop the cuts to our schools and further erode our ability to adequately educate children.”

“We now rank 47th nationwide in per pupil spending and have some of the largest class sizes and poorest student-to-teacher ratios,” said Jackson. “Prop. 30 will allow us to stop the bleeding and focus on assuring that critical dollars and resources go directly to the classroom.”

Stoker said he has made it a policy of his campaign to not take a public stand on any of the initiatives, which he stressed voters will decide. But should Prop. 30 fail at the ballot box, Stoker said he would propose a 5% across-the-board cut of state employees, exempting education and public safety employees – a dicey proposal in a Democratic-controlled Legislature. In conjunction with sweeping budget and regulatory reforms, Stoker contends that education could be bolstered without tax increases.

“While our cities, counties and schools have laid people off, the state can certainly operate with a 5% cut to assure our schools have the money they deserve,” he said. “My opponent only raises our taxes or (provides) no money for our schools.”

Jackson has planked her platform to include cutting red tape and incentivizing startups and small businesses, and closing tax loopholes that “reward” companies for taking jobs out of California.

By contrast, Stoker said bureaucracy has burdened businesses that are still in the state and has driven others out. “Everyone I speak to understands we won’t have the money we need to spend on education to give our kids the education they deserve, unless we have a stronger economy in California,” he said.

One way to turn the economy around, Stoker maintains, is by repealing every “anti-business law” on the state’s books that is not on the books of one other state. Stoker estimates that California has 1,800 such laws. Once the state is solvent, all future budget surpluses should be sunk into restoring funding “that was wrongfully stolen from education over the last five state budgets,” he said.

On this score, Jackson’s record in the state assembly reflects the problem and not the solution, according to Stoker. “Every year, the California Chamber of Commerce puts out their list of ‘Job Killer’ and ‘Job Creator’ bills. While in the Assembly, Jackson voted against the Chamber 100% of the time in regards to these bills,” Stoker said. “The consequences of the direction my opponent and her colleagues have taken us in regards to opposing what’s best for our small businesses has been catastrophic.”

Stoker has lined up endorsements from the local Chambers of Commerce, the California Small Business Owners Association and the National Federation of Independent Businesses – endorsements he said show he has the chops to help turn the state economy around.

But if bold proposals require bold compromises to pass, Republican Stoker will need quite a few across-the-aisle handshakes. Yet, Stoker doesn’t think he will have trouble, especially in the wake of the open primary ballot that he believes will boost the number of moderate Democrats elected in November.

“These are Democrats that are pro-business, anti-tax and pro-budget reform,” Stoker said. “The first calls I will make the day after the election would be to reach out to them. The fact is, middle-of-the-road Republicans like me and middle-of-the-road Democrats like them are more closely aligned than I am with the far right of my party, or they are with the far left of their party, which is where my opponent is.”

Both candidates have positioned themselves as reasonable and centrist problem-solvers, while casting the other as in the tank for the other party’s most partisan fringe.

Stoker said that for Jackson, bipartisanship will be a difficult goal to reach because of her party-line voting. Taking the open primary as an example, Stoked noted that Jackson stood with her party and opposed it, while he bucked his and supported it.

While both candidates promise to help end the partisan gridlock that had plagued Sacramento, the state Legislature has found little bipartisan success under governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown. Stoker described Jackson as “extremely partisan,” citing her refusal to support Democrat Gov. Brown’s early pension reform proposal to increase the retirement age for new hires, cap benefits and require employee contributions. The bill was watered-down, and Stoker has criticized the new version because it does not include a two-tier system where new hires are entered into a 401(k)-style defined-contribution plan.

“Neither my opponent nor one Democrat in the state Assembly or Senate would support their own governor because they would not defy the state public employee unions,” Stoker said. “They won’t support pension reform because of those unions, and they don’t support the budget reform that can save the state $10 billion because it would mean some state employees would be laid off as a result of running a more streamlined state government.”

Jackson said Stoker and bipartisanship don’t mix.

“My opponent follows the extreme positions of his party and talks in the slash-and-burn language of the Tea Party – an ideologically intractable group whose endorsement he sought and received in his most recent run for political office in 2010,” Jackson noted. “At a time when we need to come together and seek solutions, we cannot afford to allow extremist views to drive us. We need to find common ground to move our state forward and solve the critical issues we are facing today.”

She said she would tackle issues such as the economy, jobs and education through a balanced approach with a combination of cutting waste, streamlining government and investing in new technologies “that will pave the way for a thriving economy and quality of life in our community and state.”

Jackson, who has made experience a major theme of her campaign, added that she has a proven record of independence in her decision-making and would do what she thinks is best for her constituents, regardless of party. “In the Assembly, I authored over 60 bills that were signed by both Democratic and Republican governors, many of which had strong bipartisan support,” she said. “For example, I refused to vote for my party’s budget when it asked too much of working families.”

A high priority for both candidates is energy policy. Jackson advocates alternative forms to help meet California’s energy demand and as a way to create new jobs.

“California is ripe for continuing the development of future and alternative energies,” she said. “We have world-class public research institutions, combined with the problem-solvers, innovators and thinkers of tomorrow. As a state, we have already dedicated ourselves to making sure we have clean air and water, and to ensuring we keep our pristine natural resources for generations to come.

“In the past, we have and should continue to provide tax incentives for businesses wishing to invest in ‘green-tech’ and high-tech development, as well as provide incentives for consumers to purchase solar and other alternative-energy sources,” she continued. “By investing in this type of infrastructure, we not only provide for a more environmentally sustainable future, we can also bring jobs and opportunity through advanced and cutting-edge technologies that will make us the leader in the 21st-century economy.”

Stoker said the state has drafted up too much legislation that stymies energy production.

“We need to significantly expand our production of oil and gas,” he said. “New technologies like slant drilling now allow us to produce in an environmentally safe manner that we could not have 10 years ago. While I will be proud to work with our state’s oil and gas industry, my opponent has called them one of the worst of California’s out-of-control ‘special interests.’”

For more information about Mike Stoker, visit stokerforsenate.com. For more information about Hannah-Beth Jackson, visit hannah-beth2012.com. jfoster@syvjournal.com