ducation, transportation and finances are some of the key issues candidates are debating in the 21st District race for State Assembly.
Three people are running in the District, which stretches from Foster City to Los Altos and out to the coast. The candidates are Democrat Joe Simitian, a Santa Clara County supervisor; Republican Deborah Wilder, the second-term mayor of Foster City; and Green Party candidate Gloria Purcell, a Belmont planning commissioner.
The candidates are vying for the the assembly seat left open by Ted Lempert, D-Palo Alto, who is being forced out by term limits. In the three-way primary race back in March, Mr. Simitian won with 55.4 percent of the vote, Ms. Wilder got 36.7 percent and Ms. Purcell got 7.9 percent.
Mr. Simitian, 47, served on the Palo Alto Unified School Board and the City Council before he was elected to the county Board of Supervisors in November 1996. Mr. Simitian, a key figure right now in determining Stanford's future land-use policies, said his strength lies in getting different groups to work together. If elected, he said he wants to get the Bay Area to present a more unified front at the state level, to attract more funds for issues such as transportation and housing.
Ms. Wilder, 44, is a businesswoman and two-term mayor of Foster City who serves on several countywide boards, including ones involving libraries and criminal justice. As a pro-choice Republican who also opposes school vouchers, Ms. Wilder said she is not afraid to vote against traditional party platforms. She cites her appointments to leadership roles in a more heavily Democratic area as evidence of her ability to work across party lines.
Ms. Purcell, 58, has experience as a Belmont planning commissioner, library technician and school volunteer. A prominent member of the state Green Party, Ms. Purcell said she wants not only to focus on the environment as an important issue, but to take a more "holistic" look and see how the environment interrelates with other important issues affecting the region and state.
All three candidates have taken aim at early 1990s state policies that began diverting property-tax money away from local communities and into the state's budget. Each candidate said that he or she would push to send money back to communities. Ms. Wilder said it would be the first piece of legislation she would introduce.
Ms. Purcell said her first order of business would be to tackle campaign-finance reform. She said she couldn't envision even getting to her priorities of environment, children's issues and transportation without addressing the impact that campaign contributions have on the decision- making process.
"You're not even going to get to the environment or social issues as long as taxpayers' money gets siphoned off in perks and subsidies to large corporations and special interests," Ms. Purcell said.
Ms. Wilder said her main priority would be improving education. As a statehouse intern in the 1970s, Ms. Wilder said, she worked on California's last major educational overhaul and is familiar with the process. She emphasizes more local control and decision-making about educational standards, saying charter schools have been successful while having to follow only some state standards. Many of the state standards, she said, date back several decades and are outdated.
"It's time to take them off the books," Ms. Wilder said. "You can't run a business and not update your business plan."
In terms of education, Mr. Simitian said he supports public-school choice, opposes school vouchers, and supports the state's setting of educational expectations but not dictating how they should be met. Mr. Simitian said he wants to invest in the state's infrastructure -- school facilities, highways and mass transit, and parks and open space. If elected, he said, he wants to change state perceptions that the area is too affluent to need funding for housing or transit.
"I would try to convince them that because of the high cost of living (here), we need to be considered somewhat differently," Mr. Simitian said.
All three candidates have mentioned transportation and traffic problems as high priorities. Ms. Wilder said she supports better funding of mass transit and the building of housing near transportation corridors. Both Ms. Purcell and Mr. Simitian have made statements that support bringing rail service across the Dumbarton Bridge.
