LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The legislator representing the North Coast in the state Assembly is hoping voters will choose to send him back to Sacramento this November.
Wesley Chesbro, representing the First Assembly District, is looking to return to the state Assembly for his second, two-year term.
He previously served two four-year terms in the state Senate after serving 10 years on the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and six years on the Arcata City Council. He's also been an appointed member of the California Integrated Waste Management Board.
He said his overall strategy is to put the First District first, with protecting rural communities a higher priority than adhering to party lines or philosophies.
Chesbro, like many other sitting elected officials around the state and nation this year, is facing a strong anti-incumbency sentiment, and out of that has grown a challenger, Karen Brooks of Humboldt County, who is looking to unseat him.
Brooks, calling herself a “citizen candidate,” has canvassed the North Coast over the last several months, making several stops in Lake County. The two met for a debate on Monday that was televised on a North Coast Public Broadcasting System station.
“She's very earnest and sincere and I admire her for putting herself out there like I do any candidate who is willing to put themselves out there,” Chesbro said of Brooks.
Despite the sharpened criticism of a particularly heated election year, Chesbro staunchly defends his record, and points to a number of accomplishments of which he is particularly proud, including defending services to rural counties like Lake.
Chesbro believes that people are more interested in who has the practical solutions rather than in philosophical and ideological debate.
The Tea Party, which supports his opponent, “tends to really be on the fringe, advocating based on political philosophy rather than practical, bipartisan solutions,” said Chesbro.
As a result, he predicts they'll have very little impact on California races, although their influence is likely to be felt in other parts of the country.
Brooks and her supporters have criticized Chesbro for being a part of the establishment, and claim he is out of touch with his constituents.
In turn, Chesbro said some of Brooks' positions – like one in which she is pushing for more Northern California water exports to benefit Central Valley farmers – is a Tea Party talking point and isn't based on what's best for the North Coast, where such a plan would threaten the endangered salmon fishery.
He said Brooks is “to the right” of the district, which has been a Democratic stronghold for some time.
Chesbro said he's been able to represent the district meaningfully, and has worked with his urban colleagues to help them understand that real people with real needs live in rural areas.
In addition, “I've been able to protect rural services by working in a bipartisan coalition with other rural legislators,” he said.
That work has yielded the protection of funding for rural sheriff's offices, which will continue to receive funding through July 1, 2011. Chesbro is co-authoring a bill that will be introduced in January to provide long-term funding support for the program through a 0.15-percent surcharge on the vehicle license fee.
Chesbro said he helped get an exemption for small, critical access hospitals – like Sutter Lakeside and St. Helena Hospital Clearlake – from Medi-Cal rate reduction.
He also helped pass legislation to make it easier for rural volunteer firefighters to get licensed to drive fire trucks and other heavy vehicles.
For Lake County specifically, in the first year of the legislative session Chesbro said he succeeded to getting funding for the Middle Creek Restoration Project through AB 74. The project would return about 1,400 acres to wetland in order to reduce sediment and phosphorous loading in Clear Lake.
Chesbro also secured a $100,000 grant to help the county in fighting Clear Lake's algae problems.
He said he helped avoid massive cuts to home care, which is important to Lake County's aging population. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a huge reduction in home care “and we said no to that,” Chesbro said.
Chesbro, a member of the Assembly Budget Committee and Budget Subcommittee No. 1 on Health and Human Services and Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Education Finance, said that this year's state budget “is nothing to be proud of but it's the very best we could do in these tough economic times.”
He said the governor's original budget would have eliminated 430,000 jobs for teachers, firefighters and police. Chesbro said the Legislature refused to make the kinds of draconian reductions Schwarzenegger proposed.
“We saved those jobs,” he said, and also allocated $30 million for small business job creation.
Chesbro said the state's budget problems have been mostly driven by loss of revenue due to a bad economy. He said the governor's budget proposal would have created such deep cuts that the economy would have suffered more.
He said he was particularly unhappy with the delays in the budget, and he believes Proposition 25 will help fix the state's budgeting process.
He said the measure will lower the voting requirement on the budget from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority. California is one of only three states that maintain a two-thirds vote requirement on their budgets.
Chesbro also believes the measure will require greater accountability. If the budget isn't passed on time, as required by the state constitution, legislators would permanently lose their salary and expenses for the time period when there was no budget. Current law allows legislators to be reimbursed after the budget's passage.
“I'm in favor of Proposition 25,” he said.
Looking ahead, one of the areas where Chesbro said he hasn't succeeded so far but where he plans further effort is with a bill to allow rural hospitals to directly employ physicians, which he said would help attract more specialists and give hospitals another tool to recruit.
Another goal going forward is to correct damage done by the governor's vetoes to critical funding services, including recent cuts to services for children and seniors.
Much of that work, he said, will require a governor “willing to support rebuilding those programs.”
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
