Teacher Tries to Foil McClintock

After a four-year hiatus from public office, former Republican state lawmaker Tom McClintock is attempting a comeback Tuesday in an Assembly district next to the one he represented for most of the 1980s.

One man standing in his way is Democrat Jon M. Lauritzen, a veteran high school math teacher who has taken off the fall semester to run an intensive door-to-door campaign.

But McClintock has the numbers on his side.

Not only does he have 10 times as much political cash at Lauritzen, but his fellow Republican voters greatly outnumber Democrats in the 38th Assembly District that stretches from Simi Valley and Fillmore into parts of the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys.

What he does not have is a small army of Canoga Park High School students who have spent months helping Lauritzen knock on voters’ doors and distribute campaign brochures throughout the district.

“It’s about the only thing we really have going for us,” Lauritzen said of his low-budget campaign. “We have thoroughly blanketed the Valley with our literature and gone through Simi Valley and Fillmore a couple of times.”

McClintock has a smaller group of Republican college students walking precincts, but he is relying more heavily on the mail to get out his tax-cutting and budget-slashing message, which he believes will have greater appeal than Lauritzen’s views in the conservative-leaning district.

“We obviously disagree on several fundamental issues,” McClintock said.

Indeed, the two candidates are poles apart on nearly every issue, whether it is abortion, gun control, affirmative action, public education or the fundamental role of state government.

“We need to reduce the size, the scope and the burden the state bureaucracy imposes on the people of this state,” 40-year-old McClintock said, reiterating a refrain that distinguished him as one of the Legislature’s most ardent budget cutters.

Lauritzen, 58, views the state’s role in a different way.

“While McClintock thinks that the best government is no government,” he said, “my message is that the underprivileged have to have some level of assistance to keep them from slipping into miserable conditions.”

McClintock wants to ban abortions in most cases and affirmative action programs entirely, while Lauritzen wants to preserve both abortion rights and affirmative action.

Lauritzen favors strict gun controls. McClintock opposes them.

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McClintock wants to end welfare, public education and other benefits to illegal immigrants. Lauritzen believes that America has an obligation to educate and provide medical care for illegal immigrants, but thinks that the state deserves more federal aid to pay for such programs.

One of their more vehement points of disagreement is over public education.

McClintock was one of the leaders of an unsuccessful 1993 statewide ballot measure, Proposition 174, which would have given parents a voucher that they could use to pay for their children’s education in either public or private schools.

“Competition is the best incentive for the public schools to improve and innovate,” McClintock said. “The real support for vouchers often comes from inner cities. I think they ought to have the ability to choose a private school when the public school fails them.”

Lauritzen, who has spent 30 years as a math and computer science teacher, said any voucher system would devastate public schools by sending all of the best and brightest students and their education dollars to private schools.

“What would happen is that the handicapped, the hard-to-educate, the discipline problems would be left in a worse situation because the funding would flee to private schools with the good students,” he said.

“McClintock’s position on education,” Lauritzen said, “reminds me of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World,’ where they only educate the privileged classes and breed the rest of society for subservience.”

Aided by teachers’ unions, Lauritzen, a Chatsworth resident since 1954 who teaches at Canoga Park High School, easily won the Democratic primary in March in his first political campaign.

Since then, he has campaigned steadily, often with the help of student volunteers from high school government classes that require them to do a certain number of hours of community service.

Fund-raising has been difficult, though. He raised a total of about $22,000, with only $3,000 left for the final push in the campaign.

“Those kids eat a lot of pizza,” he said of his army of volunteers.

McClintock jumped into the Republican primary at the last minute, after he was recruited by one of the state’s most conservative and powerful organizations, the California Independent Business PAC.

The political action committee conducted a poll showing that McClintock was widely recognized by voters in the district and stood a better chance of winning than six other Republican candidates.

McClintock, a veteran campaigner, easily swept to victory in March, outfoxing his rivals with an aggressive campaign to woo absentee voters and outspending his opponents with prodigious fund-raising and $100,000 in loans.

So far, the campaign for Tuesday’s election has remained a relatively low-key affair.

McClintock has tried to ignore his challengers and pulled back from spending the $265,000 he has raised in loans and contributions.

Fillmore artist Virginia Newman, the Natural Law Party candidate, is also running in the race to replace Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills), who must surrender her seat because of voter-imposed term limits.

Lauritzen said he has had difficulty taking off the gloves, “exposing him [McClintock] to the public as the right-wing carpetbagger that he is.”

At political debates, Lauritzen said McClintock has been polite, cordial and respectful. “It is hard to attack someone who is like that,” Lauritzen said.

McClintock, who calls Lauritzen “a very likable gentleman,” said he has enjoyed discussing the issues with his Democratic opponent.

Mostly, he said he is focused on returning to the Assembly, where he toiled for a decade while it was controlled by Democrats.

Now that fellow conservative Republicans run the Assembly, he is eager to again pursue his longtime goal of dramatically reducing the size of state government.

“I’m looking forward to a much more fertile environment than has existed in the past 50 years,” he said. “I want to lay out a blueprint for changing the fundamental nature of the state bureaucracy.”

He believes that conservative lawmakers can do that by introducing competition, performance-based pay for state workers, removing authority from state officials over a variety of programs and handing it to local governments.

“It will take a number of years to see that blueprint developed and several years to enact it,” said McClintock, who has expressed an interest in a state Senate seat that will become available in four years. “I want to stay in the Legislature long enough to have the blueprint enacted.”

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McClintock left his Thousand Oaks-based Assembly seat in 1992 to run for Congress. He lost that bid and then ran another unsuccessful campaign in 1994 for state controller.

In between elections, McClintock has worked in Sacramento for a taxpayers’ group and most recently for the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.

He established residency in Simi Valley to qualify for the Republican primary in March and vowed to move his family from their home in a Sacramento suburb after his eldest daughter was finished with kindergarten in June.

But McClintock said he and his wife have changed their plans after a local newspaper printed a letter to the editor by a Republican opponent that invited people to check if he really lived in Simi Valley.

At the time, McClintock was criticized by his Republican rivals as a carpetbagger and political opportunist for moving into the district just to run for the open Assembly seat.

“The Ventura County Star printed our home phone number with an invitation to make harassing phone calls,” McClintock said. “We have a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old. The 6-year-old answers the phone. My wife and I decided that given that kind of climate, we were not going to subject our children to potential harassment.”

So McClintock said he has moved his local apartment from Simi Valley to Northridge and his family has remained in the Sacramento area.

“During the [legislative] session when I’m spending most of my time in Sacramento, my family will be with me in the Sacramento region,” McClintock said. “During the summer, when I’m down here, they will be with me.”

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The Candidates

With Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) forced out by term limits, the 38th Assembly seat is up for grabs. Former Republican Assemblyman Tom McClintock is attempting a political comeback. He faces Democrat Jon Lauritzen and Virginia Neuman of the Natural Law Party in the Nov. 5 election.

Jon Lauritzen

Age: 58

Occupation: Math and computer teacher

Residence: Chatsworth

Party: Democrat

Education: Bachelor’s degree in political science from San Fernando Valley State College, teaching credential at CSUN, master’s degree in computer education from CSUN.

Background: A resident of Chatsworth since 1954,The Candidates

With Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) forced out by term limits, the 38th Assembly seat is up for grabs. Former Republican Assemblyman Tom

McClintock is attempting a political comeback. He faces Democrat Jon Lauritzen and Virginia Neuman of the Natural Law Party in the Nov. 5 election.

Jon Lauritzen

Age: 58

Occupation: Math and computer teacher

Party: Democrat

Residence: Chatsworth

Education: Bachelor’s degree in political science from San Fernando Valley State College, teaching credential at CSUN, master’s degree in computer education from Cal State Northridge

Background: A resident of Chatsworth since 1954, Lauritzen has been teaching in Los Angeles schools for 30 years, first at Columbus Middle School and now at Canoga Park High School. He has been active in the local teachers union and Democratic organizations. This is his first bid for public office.

Issues: Lauritzen advocates the three-strikes sentencing rule apply only to violent criminals, strengthening handgun controls and setting up a task force to control violent gangs. He wants to reduce class size in public schools and provide free education through community college. He favors universal health care coverage and opposes Proposition 209’s plan to end affirmative action.

Tom McClintock

Age: 40

Occupation: Taxpayer lobbyist

Residence: Simi Valley

Party: Republican

Education: Bachelor’s degree in political science, UCLA

Background: As a former assemblyman living in the Sacramento area, McClintock established legal residence in Simi Valley in December to qualify for the race. He represented portions of Ventura County in the Assembly from 1982 to 1992. Since then, he ran unsuccessful campaigns for Congress and state controller and has worked for taxpayer advocacy groups in Sacramento.

Issues: He wants to cut state taxes and dramatically reduce the size of government and streamline the bureaucracy. He wants to prosecute teenage murder suspects as adults and prohibit the courts from sealing records of juveniles convicted of serious crimes. He wants to scale back welfare benefits, such as eliminating those for able-bodied people who refuse to work.

Virginia Neuman

Age: 48

Occupation: Artist

Residence: Fillmore

Party: Natural Law

Education: Bachelor’s degree in fine arts, Chelsea College of Art, London

Background: Emigrating from England in 1980, Neuman became a naturalized citizen last year. She was asked to run for office by Natural Law Party members, whom she knew through her longtime practice of Transcendental Meditation. She works as a painter, specializing in murals and decorative art. She has been active recently in Fillmore politics, joining a committee to save the Towne Theatre from demolition and another to stop newly proposed mining near the city.

Issues: Neuman supports the Natural Law Party’s proposals to reduce crime through meditation practices and other techniques that can lower stress, hostility and thus address the underlying cause of violent crime. She wants renewed emphasis on education to increase students’ learning abilities, self-esteem and overall satisfaction. She supports preventive medicine programs and wants to end subsidies to oil companies and instead promote alternative energy sources.

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38th Assembly District

District At A Glance

Party Breakdown

Republican: 46%

Democrat: 39.5%

Other: 14.5%

Ethnic Breakdown

White: 59%

Latino: 31%

African American: 3%

Asian: 6%