UPDATE: GOP candidate Matt Kokkonen has now signed the ATR pledge and faxed it in. His campaign consultant assures me that when Kokkonen ran for Asembly a few years back he signed the pledge at that time as well.
We are hopeful that "Katcho" Achadjian will also sign and fax in the pledge as well. This will allow Republicans to unifty againt the Democrats this fall on the tax issue.
ORIGINAL POST : 7:18AM
A few weeks ago, FlashReport contributor Matt Rexroad brought to our attention an editorial in the San Luis Obispo Tribune in which that paper’s editorial board endorses Supervisor K.H. "Katcho" Achadjian for State Assembly in the open 33rd District along California’s Central Coast, where Republican Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee is retiring due to term limits (actually, Blakeslee is now running for the State Senate seat vacated by Abel Maldonado). Rexroad pointed out the 
naiveté of the writers of that editorial for pointing out that one of the reasons that they are supporting Katcho (pictured, right) is because he has refused to sign the Americans for Tax Reform Tax Limitation Pledge. In their editorial, the Tribune says:
“I’d rather not make promises when I don’t know what the future will be, 100 percent,” he said.
We agree completely; perhaps California would not be in the awful shape it’s in today if more politicians had that realistic point of view.
The point of Rexroad’s post was that it is not helpful to the candidate that they like to point out that their candidate of choice won’t sign a ‘no new taxes’ pledge.
What Rexroad did not point out in his brief post is that Katcho’s refusal to sign the pledge puts him way out of the mainstream of his fellow Republicans. Of the 43 Republicans currently serving in the legislature, 42 have signed the pledge. Both Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner have signed the pledge. Almost every serious candidate for legislative office this year is campaigning having signed the pledge which, of course, is not just a piece of paper – it is a symbolic statement that there is a fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats in Sacramento. To put it simply, Republicans think that California’s taxes are too high, and Democrats think that they aren’t high enough.
If you would like to read more about the pledge or its importance, read this column penned exclusively for the FlashReport by Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform. In that piece, Norquist says:
The necessary reforms and spending restraint will never come to fruition unless tax hikes are taken off the table as an option. Candidates who have signed the Pledge recognize this.
I wrote an extensive column on this primary back in October. At that time, I observed that as a County Supervisor Katcho had supported a hike in the state’s car tax as well as support for lowering the 2/3 vote threshold to pass a budget down to 55%.
When you take these items, and combine them with the fact that Katcho deliberately refuses to 
sign a pledge that is a non-controversial “no brainer” for just about everyone else, and it causes one to conclude that he is not a fiscal conservative, unlike his main primary opponent, Etta Waterfield (pictured, right). Waterfield has signed the pledge, and touts the endorsements of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the National Tax Limitation Committee. In the case of the latter, Uhler penned a column expressing his concerns about Katcho on taxes some time ago on the FlashReport.
Probably worthy of healthy examination is the public support for Katcho from former State Senator Abel Maldonado, who rather infamously was one a handful of Republican legislators who broke their ATR pledge to cast the deciding votes last year to enact the largest tax increase in the history of California ($16 billion in higher sales, income and car taxes). Also significant is that we are seeing some big money coming out of Sacramento for Katcho — from the very same special interests who circled the wagons around that tax increase, and in fact pushed even more taxes in the form of Proposition 1A last year, that was soundly defeated by voters.
As a Republican Party officer, I do not (and cannot) endorse in contested primaries – that is a decision for our Republican voters in a district to decide. That having been said, I will say that in this race for the 33rd Assembly District, Waterfield represents a mainstream GOP position on taxes and the signing of a promise not to raise them – and Katcho comes from a leftward extreme on the issue of taxation. It will be interesting to see whether Republican voters will make this a bell weather issue when they cast their ballots.
By the way, I did attempt to contact Katch through his consultant, Jim Nygren, multiple times, to discuss this matter with him. Those requests went unanswered. But Patrick Gleason at Americans for Tax Reform verifies that as of today Katcho has not signed it .
In closing, there is a third Republican candidate in this primary – Matt Kokkonen. He is not the center point of this column because the it’s not really clear to me that he is viable as a candidate. But it should be noted that he, too, has not signed the ATR pledge, and thusly I additionally scratch my head over why Kokkonen is unwilling to draw a line in the sand against bigger state government.
Katcho and Kokkonen can easily print out the ATR Pledge, sign it and fax it back in. I encourage them to do so. Right now, given the power of the public employee unions in Sacramento, Republicans need solidarity, and as Grover Norquist said, we need to take all talk of tax increases off the table.
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