Rep. talks policies

He likes to surf. In fact, he’s slightly hard of hearing because he spends too much time in the ocean.

And he thinks marijuana should be legalized among adults in California.

It’s a waste of resources, he says, for police to try and catch dope smokers who grow the stuff in their own backyards.

He thinks global warming is a complete and utter lie, that illegal immigration must be stopped, and that there’s no such thing as dirty air any more. You should have seen Southern California when he was growing up, he said.

As for the recent health-care bill passed by the Democratically controlled Congress, he thinks it was “a travesty to Democracy.”

Meet U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), soon to be entering his 22nd year in Congress, if he wins the June primary and goes on to November’s 46th District election.

On Monday, the 62-year-old visited Costa Mesa High School seniors inside the school’s theater as part of U.S. government teacher Sandie Soldin’s class.

Maria Mendoza, a senior, stood up and asked Rohrabacher whether he thought more money should go toward helping the poor in the United States instead of trying to defeat terrorists thousands of miles away.

His answer was that Western Civilization still has reason to fear radical Islam, although he ventured that terrorism should be under control in the next five years — something he said he can speak confidently about as a senior member of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

“China is the looming threat your generation will have to deal with,” added Rohrabacher, who, for the record, moved this week from Huntington Beach with his, wife, Rhonda, and their 5-year-old triplets.

“As I like to say, my family now lives in Costa Mesa, and I continue to live on United Airlines,” joked Rohrabacher, who was born in Coronado, grew up in Rancho Palos Verdes and attended Cal State Long Beach and USC before eventually becoming a speech writer for the Reagan administration.

When he decided to run for Congress in 1989, he said close friends at the time told him that he should absolutely not.

“I won by a landslide,” he said. “Don’t ever let your friends talk you out of your goals or setting them high. God smiled on me.”

But not everybody believes Rohrabacher is good for the 46th District, which includes Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Palos Verdes and other points north and south.

Some would like to unseat the incumbent, like Democratic challenger and Long Beach doctor Jay Shah, 74.

“I believe that there must be a term limit,” Shah in a telephone interview. “Nobody should have more power than eight years in office. The guy’s been in there 22 years. There are lot of people who think that he just doesn’t care about them. That’s the problem with America: They keep re-electing the same people to office and nothing ever gets done.”

Shah, who was born in Bombay, India, but has lived in the United States for 40 years, lost a 2008 bid for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors against longtime incumbent Supervisor Don Knabe.

Ken Arnold, 56, a business systems analyst from Fountain Valley, has also filed his candidacy papers for the 46th District’s June Democratic primary.

“The district needs someone that will represent the district,” Arnold said in an e-mail. “Someone that understands the job and will actually work. Somebody that will write or help shape needed legislation or abolish obsolete laws.”

Arnold unsuccessfully ran against state Assemblyman Van Tran (R-Westminster), whose district includes Costa Mesa.

On the Republican side, Rohrabacher is so far unopposed.