This blog loves Melissa Fox. She’s smart. She’s capable. And she’s one of the best Democratic candidates for the Assembly seat now held by State Rep. Chuck DeVore in years.Â
Her Republican opponents – Steven Choi, Don Wagner and Jerry Amante – look more and more like theThree Stooges as they try and out-conservative each other in a battle for “who’s more to the Right than I am.” Melissa doesn’t have this distraction to worry about.
Melissa sent us this essay about why she’s running, and since it’s Holidays, we’re more than happy to post it:
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Running in the “Red”
When I tell people that I’m running for the California Assembly as a Democrat in Orange County, some react as through I’ve told them that I’ve just volunteered for a suicide mission deep into enemy territory.
And when I tell them I expect to win, they look at me as though I have said something sweet, but incredibly naïve.
As naïve, for example, as saying you believe that an African-American Democrat named Barack Hussein Obama could carry my Orange County assembly district in a presidential election.
But Barack Hussein Obama did carry the 70th Assembly District – and by 8,721 votes.
Orange County was once the most Republican county in the nation, and many people still think of it that way. But Orange County has changed enormously in the last decade. On the positive side, Orange County has become far more diverse, better educated, and economically dynamic than ever before. On the negative side, we have been hit tremendously hard by the mortgage crisis, the collapse of the real estate market, and the state’s budget cuts.
Orange County is no longer complacent and satisfied with the status quo.
We want real, positive change.
I hear and feel that desire for positive change – yesterday, for example, when I overheard two ladies at lunch talking about the need for comprehensive healthcare reform and deploring the antics of the Astroturf bullies.
I hear and feel it when I meet voters, who often respond to my serious, committed-to-winning campaign as though I’d offered them a drink of water after a long trek in the desert.
I hear and feel it in the enthusiastic response I receive when I talk about funding our schools, supporting UC Irvine and our community colleges, keeping seniors in their homes, giving tax relief to the middle class and small businesses, creating green jobs, protecting our ocean, waves, and beaches, and about how we can renew the California Dream that once made our state the envy of the nation.
Of course, the road to positive change isn’t easy. The ferocious tea-baggers and the town hall bullies make a lot of noise and still control most of the district’s elected officials. But their ferociousness comes largely from the fact that they no longer have the majority of the district’s voters on their side.
As a female business litigator who has defended small businesses for more than 17 years in the Orange County courts, I am used to being underestimated. My opponents are often still smiling at me patronizingly when the judge rules in my favor.
I welcome the challenge of running as a Democratic candidate in a what people often assume is a “red†county (and that is longer really “redâ€).
As we enter the New Year, I hope you’ll join me in our winning campaign to Renew the California Dream in 2010.
Melissa