Posted on 04/18/2003 11:02:11 AM PDT by Saundra Duffy
Parra in eye of political storm
By VIC POLLARD, Californian Sacramento Bureau e-mail: vpollard@bakersfield.com
Saturday April 12, 2003, 10:59:36 PM
SACRAMENTO -- Democratic Assemblywoman Nicole Parra knows the Republicans are watching her like a hawk, looking for any misstep they can use in a campaign against her next year.
Her solution: Play basketball with them every Tuesday morning.
To political professionals, Parra's razor-thin margin of victory over Dean Gardner in the west-side 30th Assembly District last year makes her vulnerable. It automatically puts her on the GOP's list of "targets" for an all-out campaign to unseat her before she has a chance to become an entrenched incumbent.
But Parra is not hunkering down in a defensive stance.
In fact, she goes to the hoop every chance she gets in a weekly basketball game with members of the Assembly Republican caucus and their aides at a gym near the Capitol.
They include caucus Chairman Tony Strickland of Thousand Oaks and Whip Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield. Another regular is Richard Katz, a former Democratic assemblyman and a key adviser to Gov. Gray Davis.
"It's about 20 to 25 guys and me," Parra said in an interview. "It's fun. We get to know each other. Tony teases me. He says it's going to be even harder to take me out because they like me."
In her first four months on the job, Parra has gotten more attention and support from Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson and his staff than almost any other freshman Assembly member in many years. Her only rival in that area may be second-term Democratic Assemblywoman Barbara Matthews of Tracy, who faces an equally tough re-election battle next year.
Wesson's goal is to avoid the loss of two Assembly seats in which the Democratic Party and its donors have invested millions of dollars.
Well more than $2 million flowed into Parra's campaign from unions, trial lawyers, environmentalists and other traditional Democratic sources.
The Republican Party gave Gardner only token financial support, yet Parra won by less than 300 votes.
Parra, 33, is being groomed to come out of her first two-year term with a record that will be difficult for any Republican to attack, even though voters in her three-county west valley Assembly district are moderate to conservative at heart.
She has a staff that is unusually large for a freshman Assembly member and includes some of the Capitol's best and highest-paid legislative and political professionals. She was given unusual approval to have two offices in her district, one in Bakersfield and one in Hanford.
Wesson appointed her chairwoman of the Assembly Veterans Affairs Committee, giving her a potential constituency among the kind of conservative voters who populate her district.
He also cleared the way for her to carry what was sure to be one of the most popular, bipartisan bills of the session, making the Megan's law sex offender notification program permanent. He also created a special committee on Megan's law, naming her to head it.
Parra doesn't deny she's getting special treatment, but she says that's good for her constituents.
"If the district benefits from the fact that I have the best and brightest of staff in Sacramento, if the district benefits because I have the ability to have two district offices, if the district benefits because I have the Speaker's ear on issues, then that's good for the district," she said.
Parra also has what may be the most conservative voting record among Assembly Democrats, whether it's due to her own philosophy or guidance from the professionals in the speaker's office.
So far, Parra has voted with the Republicans on nearly every major issue, often crossing the Democratic leadership.
She insists that's who she is, saying she learned the moderate politics of the valley as the daughter of Kern County Supervisor Pete Parra and as an aide for 10 years to moderate Democratic Congressman Cal Dooley of Hanford.
She finds all the attention to her voting record ironic.
"It's amazing," she said. "During the campaign, I was labeled a liberal, and then I'm up here and people are calling me a Republican. You can't please everyone."
As a result, she has given little satisfaction to Republicans who hoped she would betray liberal tendencies they could exploit next year or otherwise fall on her face.
"Nicole's a likeable person," says her basketball buddy, Strickland, who likely would play a key role in a campaign against her next year. "However, she hasn't been tested yet. We haven't done any very controversial votes since she's been up here."
The only vote the GOP has found to criticize her on so far came during the highly charged Assembly debate over a resolution supporting U.S. troops in Iraq.
She refused to go along with a Republican motion to add language supporting President Bush.
"I would think the commander in chief would be pretty popular in her district," Strickland said.
The biggest test for Parra and other moderate Democrats will come on the state budget later this year.
Democrats insist that some tax increases will be necessary, along with spending cuts, to close the enormous deficit.
Republicans insist no tax increases are necessary and they have their notebooks ready to record the name of any Democrat who doesn't go along with them.
Parra won't say now whether she will vote for the budget, but she said she will make it clear to the speaker the most important things she needs to see in it in order to cast an aye vote. They include preservation of funding for the Williamson Act farmland preservation program.
But Wesson made it clear he expects a vote from her for the budget when the time comes. Democrats are six votes short of the two-thirds' majority needed for passage of the budget. Every Democrat who doesn't vote for it means one more Republican vote he needs to secure. And at this point, Republicans are vowing to vote in a solid block against the budget if it contains any tax or fee increases.
"I'm optimistic that at the end of the day, when we put up a vote on the budget, we'll have all the Democrats, including Ms. Parra," Wesson said.
Otherwise, Wesson gave a ringing endorsement of Parra's performance so far.
"I always thought she would do well, but she has exceeded what I expected, and a lot of that is based on her work ethic," Wesson said.
Parra's major bills, which are just now starting through the legislative process, focus mainly on law-and-order issues and agriculture.
In addition to making Megan's law permanent, she wants to tighten the registration requirements for convicted sex offenders and to make sure college students are notified when a sex offender is enrolled.
She also wants to scrap the requirement for renewal of handgun safety certificates every five years.
Parra said she decided this was unnecessary when she took a gun safety course as part of her plan to apply for a concealed weapon permit for herself.
She won't be the only legislator with a gun permit, but she said she wants it so she can feel safer on the long drives around her large district, and to and from Sacramento.
When she arrived in Sacramento, Parra also faced hostility from one fellow Democrat, Sen. Dean Florez of Shafter. It apparently stemmed from bitterness between Florez and her father. Florez also supported her opponent in the Democratic primary election, Jim Crettol.
Early on, Florez and Parra openly sparred with each other over Megan's law legislation and other issues. Lately however, the hostilities appear to have died down, and they have begun cooperating on some issues.
Parra says the new atmosphere grew out of practical considerations.
She said the two met in her office and agreed to try to bury the hatchet.
"This is definitely a positive, I think, for the residents of the Central Valley, to have members who acknowledge that fact that it didn't work when we were fighting," she said. "It was just foolish and childish and we're two hardworking people and we want to be role models for our future leaders."
Florez confirmed that the meeting was an effort to ease the tension.
"I said we weren't there on the primary," Florez recalled, "and obviously we've been kind of distant. But now we need to find ways to work together on things we agree on. We're going to agree on some things and we're going to disagree on some things, but we can work together."
Parra said the biggest disappointment of her first few months in office has been the slow progress on solving the huge budget deficit.
"I thought we were going to come up here and go a hundred miles an hour, working day and night addressing the budget issues," she said.
"We really haven't, in my opinion, got out of first gear."
Meanwhile, Nicole Parra, a young pretty protege of Congressman Cal Dooley, has been appointed by Speaker Wesson to Chair the VETERANS AFFAIRS COMMITTEE!!
Now, Dean Gardner, the GOP nominee, is a Navy Veteran and he got screwed by the democrats and REPUBLICANS. He would have easily won this seat with just a little help from Republicans BUT . . . OH NO . . . the Republicans gave big bucks to others . . . and left Dean out to dry.
California sometimes MAKES ME SICK!!!!!!!! Sheeeeesh.
Here are some previous links if anyone is interested:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/859348/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/824547/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/814512/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/804940/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/799537/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/799537/posts
Whatever . . . For victory & freedom!!!
I've heard that before but it's just so painful for those of us at the grass-roots. You know.
I'd bash her .. but she's armed. :-o
Calculated - with the blessing of the democraps - to make her look like a conservative Republican. It's a game.
This is definitely not the old proud California Republican party of yesteryear, and at this rate, never will be again, Bush or no Bush in the White House.
Do I need a sarcasm tag? ;-)
We do need a purge of the RINOs and pretenders from the CAGOP, maybe even a name change to the Conservative Party, let the CA Republican party die, if they would let this abuse continue.
Not in our name...
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