The GOP candidates listed above are running in "safe" Republican or competitive legislative seats, and have not as of now signed a written pledge to oppose new taxes.
Earlier today I blogged about the importance to taxpayers of being able to vote for candidates for office that are willing to pledge, in writing, that they will oppose tax increases. I am pleased to report that, despite the new “top two election” system in place because of Prop. 14, we still have very few viable Republican candidates who have not signed a written pledge. While perhaps less ideal than simply posting a long list of everyone who has signed the No New Taxes pledge, I’ve compiled a list below of viable candidates in safe Republican or competitive seats that have not signed it. If a candidate took their own No New Taxes pledge, publicly, that was similar enough to the No New Taxes pledge, we counted that as well for our purposes as a signer. You could go to the Americans for Tax Reform website to see which candidates have signed the federal or state level pledge. But they get behind with their updates at crunch time, and of course they wouldn’t have anyone listed there who took their own public, written pledge.
Feel free to contact us with questions — and by all means if you are one of the candidates listed here and you either think you have been placed here in error, or would like to sign the pledge, just let us know. On a closing note, just a reminder, there are no incumbent Republican Members of Congress or the State Legislature seeking re-election this year who have not signed the pledge. And also a pledge that you signed in a previous election for a different position is not valid if you are running for a different office (but it is valid if you are seeking re-election).
Trust me when I tell you that the pressure on Republicans to support tax increases in Sacramento is great — almost unimaginable in fact. One of the reasons that it is important to support candidates for the legislature that are willing to sign a written pledge is that you know that when all of these rent-seekers and special interests come knocking at your legislators door, they can tell them, “Get out of here, I am on the record here, quite unequivocally, opposing higher taxes!”
June 2nd, 2012 at 3:04 pm
What would Ronald Reagan do? We know what he would do because he did it. In his own words: “As a result, we have, as you know, submitted a revenue bill of nearly one billion dollars in increased taxes.” Reagan went on to explain what the increased taxes would do: “Roughly half of that tax increase is necessary simply to pay off this year’s deficit and put us on a pay-as-you-go basis. Half of the remainder is not a new tax so much as a broader based substitute tax to give, for the first time, direct property tax relief. Next year, with the deficit paid off, that relief can be more than doubled. The remainder – about one-quarter of the total tax revenues – is for the normal increase to keep pace with population growth and increased prices and wages …” I don’t think Ronald Reagan would sign on to some dumb tax pledge. That is why the far right wing-nuts of his time as Governor who were in the leadership of the CRA vilified him as a – gasp – moderate. I wonder; Jon, do you think Ronald Reagan could get the backing of the California Republican Party if he were starting out today – and you were still on the governing board?
June 2nd, 2012 at 3:47 pm
As though 1966 is anywhere near analogous to the present time. There is absolutely no excuse for any Republican candidate to avoid pledging not to raise taxes. Failure to do so gives aid and comfort to the spending lobby that has overspent the state into the chronic deficits it now reaps on an annual basis.