The Ferguson-Badham Race for the Assembly

Neither I nor the conservative voters of my district and of Orange County are surprised to find The Times endorsing my opponent (May 27).

We have all, by now, come to expect in your editorials an unmistakable distaste for conservatism and we Republicans who have been elected to champion conservative values. The distaste may be cautiously worded, but we are always reminded that, while you have established a geographic presence within our community, your philosophy is rooted elsewhere.

Although I do not believe your support for my opponent will make a noticeable difference in this election, I would like to correct the factual errors contained in your editorial.

Anyone familiar with the hundreds of bills that I have authored, co-authored and supported over the past six years to deal with transportation, crime, education and child pornography could hardly call me “obsessed” with ousting Tom Hayden from the Assembly, as you have.

It is the media, however, that have chosen to give greater attention to that effort than to my legislation affecting even the most critical of other issues.

I am certainly not going to apologize to you for responding to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and thousands of other California veterans by making the motion in 1986 to oust Hayden, and to bring attention to the fact that his Democrat colleagues won’t carry out the Constitution in that regard.

Nor am I going to apologize for referring to a group of homosexual activists, who shouted curses at me as I left a church and spat on my car, as “faggots.”

As for my opposition to state funding for a Japanese-American memorial, I oppose using taxes to support any private foundation. This particular one was to be built inside a religious shrine. The taxpayers shouldn’t have to pick up the tab for that.

The voters of the 70th Assembly District have shown over and over again that they want a Republican conservative to represent them.

In 1984 when I was first elected, I was chosen over six others to be the Republican standard-bearer. Had my constituents been dissatisfied thereafter, they could have replaced me in any of two primary and three general elections held since; instead, each time they gave me the most or next-highest number of votes of any Assembly member in the state. And, when a well-known and well-financed moderate challenged me in the last primary, I was again chosen overwhelmingly.

I have worked hard for our district, and I am confident that I will be reelected to continue doing so.

GIL FERGUSON

Assemblyman, 70th District