Brad Parton’s Place on Political Spectrum

The Los Angeles Times reports that Brad Parton is running for the 53rd Assembly District seat as a moderate. Who does Parton think that he is kidding?

During the primary campaign I attended a League of Women Voters campaign forum at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center. Parton’s partisans packed the hall and rudely heckled the other Republican candidates. While Dan Walker, Barbara Doerr and George Young tried to discuss such issues as workers’ compensation reform, regulatory simplification and economic revitalization, Parton’s backers verbally abused them for failing the ideological litmus tests of the far right.

Parton’s entire political career has been focused upon such issues as banning women’s right to choose to terminate pregnancies, banning books from public libraries, and using the power of government to regulate private conduct. Make no mistake about it! Parton’s partisans are trying to send him to Sacramento to cast a vote against a woman’s right to choose, should the United States Supreme Court overturn Roe vs. Wade. Parton’s partisans also expect him to pursue the social agenda of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

The issues that matter to most South Bay residents, economic revitalization, insurance reform and a balanced, temperate environmentalism are not the focus of Parton and his backers. Parton is not a political moderate. He is an extremist, who believes that government can be transformed into an instrument that compels everyone to live according to the dictates of the religious right. Perhaps this is why such prominent South Bay elected Republicans as Torrance Mayor Katy Geissert and Torrance City Council member Maureen O’Donnell have failed to endorse Parton’s candidacy.

The South Bay has never sent political extremists of the far right or left to Sacramento. We ought to think twice before abandoning that tradition.

CRAIG KESSLER

Torrance