As the Fresno Bee reported, last Friday’s sold out Lincon Club breakfast forum, featuring former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson, Current Fresno Council President Larry Westerlund, current State Senator Jeff Denham, and former member of Congress Richard Pombo was a great start to the public part of the campaign.
In promoting the forum, the Club promised hard hitting questioning, and our audience told us that we certainly met that test. Here is sample of what we asked these four men:
Senator Denham:
California’s State Budget is a disaster of historical proportions, and yet you, in 2005-06 and in 2006-07, voted for State Budgets that raised the General Fund spending in California to unsustainable levels, from $81 billion to over $101 billion. The State Legislative Analyst correctly warned against the assumptions made in these budgets, and the LAO’s warnings turned out to be factually correct. We are still reeling from the fiscal disaster these budgets created. Later, in 2009, you voted to place Prop 1A on the ballot, a tax increase.
When you traded your Budget vote for the Democratically Controlled Chair Agricultural Committee what benefit were you able to deliver to your district.?
How can you justify these votes, and present yourself to us as a fiscal conservative?
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Mr. Westerlund:
– you’re entering your sixth year on the Fresno City Council. On February 1, 2005 a motion came to the Fresno City Council to reconsider the economic development agreement authorizing a loan guarantee for the failed Granite Park project. You were the swing vote against reconsideration of this project, and you later voted in favor of a $5.2 million dollar city loan guarantee. A little more than two years later, on June 26th, 2007 you voted in favor of a “resolution of intent” to guarantee loan funds to the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, and then on July 31st, 2007 you not only made the motion in favor of the loan guarantee, but you voted “aye” on the actual $15 million loan, which the city has since had to repay. The Museum is now closed and being liquidated. These two projects have exposed the City of Fresno to tens of millions in potential loan losses and imperiled the stability of the City’s General Fund. Given this performance, and the disastrous condition of the nation’s finances, can you explain to this audience how you, as a member of Congress, can credibly propose solutions to resolve our nation’s budget deficit, national debt and other pressing financial issues when the City of Fresno is on the hook for $20 million in failed projects approved with your votes?
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Mr. Pombo, Republicans from 1996 to 2006 became the Party of earmarks, deficits and new entitlement programs, resulting in their loss of the Congress in 2006. Can you prove to this audience a specific body of work in which you actively opposed this from occurring? Can you produce position papers, op ed pieces or other evidence that you were opposed to Republicans becoming the Party of big government?
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Mr. Patterson. It has been over a decade since you last held elected office. One of the more controversial aspects of your terms as Mayor was the public financing of the downtown baseball stadium. You opposed it at the time, and many of us in this room agreed with your position, however, we have documented accounts from several members of the business community that, after you were out of office, and it appeared the stadium would be commercially successful, you actually apologized to several people in the community for opposing the stadium project.
Now that it appears the stadium is a fiscal noose around the city of Fresno’s neck, you have recently claimed that you were right all along about the stadium’s viability.
Which Mr. Patterson will be presenting himself to the voters this spring: the former Mayor that opposed the stadium, the former Mayor that later apologized for opposing the stadium, or the former Mayor that now claims he was right all along?
Let’s make no mistake about it – the candidates weren’t really happy with the Lincoln Club at this point. And let’s not make another mistake – these questions were the most talked about aspect fo the forum. We put them on the spot, and our audience loved it. I’ll have more analysis later.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.
