I received the following question from a resident of Santa Cruz County, from Boulder Creek: "How will you represent this sliver of Santa Cruz County?" See the details of the question below.
Here is my response:
It’s great to hear that you are considering an alternate choice after voting for Rep. Eshoo all these years. I seek to bring people-centric behavior and will serve with ethical integrity. I am NOT out of touch, but keenly aware of the issues going on. My plan is to engage and address the challenges of every neighborhood of our district.
Hearing directly from our neighbors about the issues they face has been very important to me. When I was running for city council, I knocked on every door in our city, and had thousands of conversations to understand the neighborhood concerns and aspirations. That was helpful to me in addressing the top challenges of my community. I was re-elected with the most votes in city history - a track record of addressing the tough challenges.
This is the reason why I have met neighbors in every part of Santa Cruz county - in the pre-covid-19 world. We have held town hall meetings at Scotts Valley (twice), Felton (twice), Brookdale, Ben Lomond, Boulder Creek and Santa Cruz (twice). During conversations, I heard about the challenges with fire insurance, highway-17 safety, emergency communication, transportation, broadband amongst others. See my views on fire insurance here. My plan with air traffic noise. Here is my policy with fire. I will focus diligently on resolving these challenges.
I bring a track record of helping people, solving problems and getting things done. When the pandemic struck, I suspended our campaign to launch the Neighborhood Pandemic Preparedness Team. We called 86,000 seniors in our community offering help with groceries, medicines, and masks, helping them stay quarantined. Hundreds of our volunteers helped thousands of our neighbors. During the Santa Cruz fire and evacuation, we called thousands of residents asking if we could help. In a crisis, I will ensure that I will call every resident of our county offering my help.
I seek your support and vote to address the long pending challenges of Santa Cruz County. My platform is about getting things done - and I will do my very best to push them as your Congressional Representative. Time for - New Energy, New Leadership.
I would be honored to have your vote.
Here is the original question from the voter (received by email):
“I live in Boulder Creek and am old enough to remember a time before our portion of Santa Cruz County was gerrymandered into the 18th District. While there have always been many things I like and respect about Anna Eshoo, this is the first time we have a choice that appears to reflect my own ideology, perhaps better than our incumbent.
My question is this, how will you represent this sliver of Santa Cruz County? Our concerns are often very different from those important to people who live “over the hill”. Personally, I have often felt like the toad’s tail of the district; we are here but have been absorbed into an area so unlike our own that our issues are nor heard nor addressed.
One case in point is the changing of flight paths over Santa Cruz, where Representative Eshoo seemed to turn her ear to constituents over the hill without regard for the impact on her constituents in Santa Cruz County. Just one example.
I am tired of feeling like the toad’s tail of the district. Honestly I don’t think we belong in the 18th district at all, but that is not on the ballot so the best I can do is ask how you intend to represent the entire district, including the toad’s tail sliver of Santa Cruz County? What will you do to insure we are heard? How will you balance our concerns with the concerns of your “over the hill” constituents, who have bigger numbers and different priorities?”
