John Kane: Bringing a fresh approach to politics

Deepa Bharath

Irvine resident John Kane is in the middle of his first run for

any public office.

But the 40-year-old software developer, who is running for the

70th Assembly District seat against incumbent John Campbell, says he

is out there to give “the voters a choice.”

The Democrat described himself as an “empathetic individual” who

is able to hear all aspects of an issue and not be blinded by

ideology.

“I’m willing to listen to both sides of a story,” he said.

“Sometimes, there are more than two sides to a story.”

The major issue Kane said he is concerned with at the state-level

is the energy crisis.

“If these companies want to do business in California, we need to

make sure they give us back the millions of dollars they stole from

us,” he said. “In the future, we need to get tougher with these

companies and not let them play games with us.”

Among other issues, Kane said he supports upholding the authority

of local city governments or municipalities.

“The state shouldn’t be butting in when it’s a local issue,” he

said. “When there is a concern about public health or safety, there

is a reason for the state to come into the picture. But otherwise I

don’t think it should interfere with the local governments.”

He is also a staunch supporter of clean air and clean water, Kane

said.

“I believe there should be a strong focus on cleaning up the water

flowing into the ocean,” he said. “I know we have budget constraints,

but I believe that this is an important issue and we need to make

sure allocations are made for it.”

Education, he said, is also vulnerable to decisions made at the

state level.

“Funding is key, especially with what we see in Irvine schools,”

he said. “We need to make sure we continue to maintain the

student-teacher ratio at 20 to 1. We need to keep our class sizes

small.”

Among the assembly bills he supports is one proposed by

Assemblyman Joe Dunn that increases the age limit of tobacco users

from 18 to 21.

Kane is also passionately against taking money from large

corporations for his campaign, he said.

“You can’t take money from insurance companies and regulate them,”

he said. “I know it’s probably naive to believe no one takes

contributions, but I really believe it leaves a lot of room for

conflicting interests in the future.”

Kane said he has heard a lot about how he would bring a fresh

perspective with his clean slate background in politics.

“I hope to do that,” he said. “But everybody has life experience

and something to offer.”