Former Republican assemblyman Dean Andal has announced he will
challenge Congressman Jerry McNerney in the November 2008
election.
Morgan Hill – Former Republican assemblyman Dean Andal has announced he will challenge Congressman Jerry McNerney in the November 2008 election.
The 48-year-old businessman will try to secure the Republican nomination in a race where former San Francisco 49er Brent Jones is a potential rival, according to the National Committee for an Effective Congress. Andal is the only Republican candidate to have officially announced, doing so on May 17 in a press release. He has already raised $400,000. Should he win the primary, he will then try to beat Congressman Jerry McNerney to become the 11th congressional district’s representative.
Andal was born in Salem, Ore., but he grew up in California, and has lived in Stockton for 31 years. He began his public career in 1991, when he won a special election to the California State Assembly. He was reelected to a full term in 1992. In 1994, he won a seat on the California Board of Equalization, a position that he was reelected to in 1998. He lost his bid to become the Republican nominee for the California State Controller position in 2002 to Tom McClintock. Apart from his political career, he is the founder and president of Andal Communications, a real estate marketing firm.
He will not face the allegations that Richard Pombo, the Republican representative from 1993 until 2007, had. Pombo was named as one of the 13 most corrupt members of Congress by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Pombo also had issues with environmental groups.
“Pombo hasn’t met a part of the country that he doesn’t want to drill, mine, or develop,” said Mark Longabaugh, former political director for the League of Conservation Voters, told grist.org in Jan. 2006. “He tops the list of history’s most ruthless environmental bad boys.”
Andal differs from Pombo on the environment. While the former congressman supported offshore drilling, Andal does not. He was a coauthor of the Delta Protection Act, a state assembly bill that prevented land development in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area. He also supports the use of alternative fuels.
“This might be one of my rare agreements with Jerry to invest in alternative fuels,” he said. “I’m all for that. Where we disagree is that we can’t exclusively count on those things. We have growing energy needs, and if we don’t have fossil fuels, we”re going to grow increasingly dependent on the Middle East area.”
Even with the link to Abramoff and the problems with environmentalists, McNerney only beat Pombo by little more than 13,000 votes, 109,868 to 96,396. With those figures in mind, Andal thinks he has a good chance to reclaim Pombo’s seat.
“This is a district that relatively favors conservative ideas,” Andal said. “It’s not extremely conservative, but it’s center-right. On the issues, I think I’m on the right side. I think people there believe national defense is a top priority. I think people favor tax cuts because it’s a free enterprise district. There’s a lot of business and job growth. I don’t think this district would want, in it’s wildest dreams, Nancy Pelosi as the the speaker of the House.
“I think those are issues that transcend party label. Unfortunately for Jerry McNerney, who I think is a nice guy who is trying hard, he has all the wrong ideas.”
Andy Stone, the communications director for Congressman McNerney, responded to the charge that McNerney was out of touch.
“Congressman McNerney’s office is focused on doing the job he was elected to do, representing the people of the 11th district,” Stone wrote in an e-mail. “That’s why he’s back in the district almost every weekend holding Congress at Your Corner events, meeting with his advisory boards, and speaking to school groups. Working in Washington for the people of Morgan Hill, and the entire 11th district, is what he’s concentrating on.”
Another issue that 11th district voters care about, according to Andal, is immigration. He worries about hospital rooms over-filled with illegal immigrants, schools educating their children at taxpayers’ expense and the entry of criminals who had lived south of the border, Andal said.
“I think people have legitimate criticisms,” Andal said. “It starts with, ‘Are we going to have the rule of law in our country?’ We have all these laws on the books, and people are bewildered about why they’re not enforced. People are very knowledgeable about immigration because of all the media coverage. They’re scratching their heads because it’s a big question. If we pass laws that are not enforced, that undermines the ethic of our government.
“Though many of the people are hard working and want to earn money for their family, there is also a criminal element coming in. Roughly half of the jail population in Los Angeles County are illegal immigrants. In every county of California, the jails are full of criminals who are not even supposed to be in our country. I think the social costs of this are becoming too burdensome to tolerate anymore.”
Among the conservative ideas that Andal champions is a smaller federal government. He’s a traditional conservative, and called himself a “budget-hawk.” Though he criticized McNerney for not voting for a permanent $400 billion tax cut, he found problems with members of his own party as well.
“When people elected a Republican majority to Congress, they expected a couple of things out of them. One would be to be careful with taxpayer money, and not foolishly spend it. I think they let us down, and it’s partly why we lost last time,” Andal said.
Andal focuses much of his rhetoric on the need to spend tax money wisely. One of the biggest drains on government funds is the war in Iraq.
According to the National Priorities Project, an anti-war organization, the costs have exceeded $459 billion already. That being said, he still supports the effort and criticized those who use it as an issue to get reelected.
“They’re demanding a timeline to get out of Iraq, but they’re unwilling to give a date,” Andal said. “Congressman McNerney has told supporters he wants a timeline, and when they ask him what date that should be, he diverts. I think that’s because there is a great concern over what would happen in the region if we arbitrarily got our troops out. I don’t think it’s logistically possible to get our troops out in a few months, it takes a long time to do that.”
Andal criticized American political leaders for not setting a specific strategy, or overlying goal for the mission. In essence, the soldiers could win all the battles and lose the war because politicians in Washington failed to set definite goals for the occupation, known as “Operation: Iraqi Freedom” by war supporters. Whatever color a person paints a house, it’s still the same house at the end of the day. Orwell would call it a war, but other people might want to alter reality.
“I think there is a lot of sound and reasonable criticism of the tactics that were undertaken during the beginning of the war, and it led us to a result we don’t like,” he said. “I also think that congress should play an oversight role in the executive decisions. The congress’s job is to make sure the president is doing his job and spending money well.
“But mouthing off about what you don’t know about, they should be engaging in the real work, in conversations with the administration and asking tough questions. Instead of doing that hard work, which is quiet, thoughtful and doesn’t involve press releases, we have congressman that are running back to their district and sending out press releases. That’s just not going to lead to a good result for our country.”
Because he supports increasing federal defense spending, a question was raised about the difference between the Republican and the Democratic party. Democrats have long supported bigger government, while traditional conservatives have favored smaller government. Since the Bush administration began, many republicans supported larger government with programs such as faith-based initiatives or anti-terror agencies. Both parties seem hell-bent on expansion, rather than contraction. Notable conservatives such as Washington Post columnist George Will and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have said as much.
“My biggest frustration remained the president’s unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending,’ Greenspan wrote in his most recent book. “The Republicans in Congress lost their way. They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.
Andal disagreed.
“I think the Republican Party has been advocating less government and lower spending,” Andal said. “I do agree that many republican office holders, including those in congress, have not been consistent with that idea. I’m not running as a Republican Party advocate. I have my own ideas. I do believe the federal government should be limited in size, because that’s good for freedom purposes and it keeps our economy healthy.”
