From Medicare to Schools, Gallegly and Unruhe Differ

A year after voting to reduce Medicare spending, U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly finds himself in a reelection contest against a 73-year-old retired high school teacher who utilizes the government insurance program.

Indeed, Bob Unruhe, Gallegly’s Democratic challenger, said his age and ties to the senior community will provide him with powerful ammunition against the Simi Valley Republican in Tuesday’s election. Unruhe predicts seniors from both parties will turn out in large numbers at the polls to express their displeasure with Gallegly.

“This will be one of the deciding votes in the election because seniors know full well that Dole, Gingrich and Gallegly all voted to cut back Medicare,” Unruhe said. The Republican proposal to limit Medicare increases was ultimately vetoed by President Clinton.

Gallegly, 52, defends his position on Medicare spending, saying the government insurance program for the elderly is on the brink of bankruptcy and requires immediate attention.

“What we are trying to do is save it, not just patch it up for this election cycle,” he said. “I’m going to continue to support whatever it takes to continue its solvency beyond the election.”

But Medicare is not the only area where Gallegly and Unruhe disagree. Whatever the issue--abortion, education spending, the environment or illegal immigration--the two candidates can find little common ground.

“Except for motherhood and apple pie, I disagree with him on almost everything,” Unruhe said. “So the people have a clear choice.”

Although he has almost no name recognition nor political cash, Unruhe appears undaunted in his challenge of Gallegly, who piled up nearly $350,000 in seeking his sixth term in the 23rd Congressional District. The district, where Democratic voters hold a slight edge, encompasses nearly all of Ventura County, except for most of Thousand Oaks.

Unruhe, a former government teacher at Buena and Ventura high schools, said he believes that Gallegly and the Republican-dominated Congress have lost touch with most of America. He went on to accuse Gallegly of dodging three recent candidate forums sponsored by seniors’ groups around the county because of his position on Medicare.

“I have the issues on my side,” Unruhe said.

Gallegly dismissed his opponent’s accusations, saying he received an invitation to only one of the candidates’ forums and could not attend because it was received at the last minute.

The congressman said seniors have always been his biggest supporters and that he believes they will rally behind him again. Even with a slowdown in future Medicare spending, Gallegly stressed that individual benefits under the Republican plan would have still increased from $4,800 annually to $7,100 over the next six years.

“If I want an 80% increase in funding, instead of 81%, they say that’s a cut,” Gallegly said of Democrats. “That’s the typical liberal response. To say that this is a cut in Medicare spending, to me, that is a total fraud.”

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With baby boomers moving up in age, Gallegly warned that there is going to be increasing pressure to reform the Medicare system before it collapses.

“The problem is not going to go away,” he said. “If we don’t aggressively address Medicare, it’s going to go bankrupt.”

But Unruhe argued that if Republicans can find money for a proposed 15% tax cut, which they argue is needed to further stimulate the economy, “then there ought to be money for Medicare.”

“They’re losing votes,” Unruhe said, “so now they’re trying to buy votes.”

Unruhe and Gallegly also part ways on how to deal with illegal immigration, an issue that has recently cast the congressman in the national spotlight for his decade-old crusade for immigration reforms.

Unruhe criticized Gallegly for proposing legislation that would have allowed states to deny a public education to illegal immigrants of school age. The proposal was eventually removed from an immigration bill approved last spring by Congress and the president.

“I think that’s a mean-spirited approach,” Unruhe said. “Kicking kids out of school would cause more problems than it would solve. You’d have a bunch of kids roaming the streets with nothing to do.”

Gallegly said the proposed legislation has been misrepresented by Unruhe and other Democrats. For instance, he said, rather than immediately removing adolescents from school, it would have provided for a free public education--through the 12th grade--for those enrolled in school before July 1997.

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But Gallegly said the most important provision of the legislation is that it would give states the power to decide whether to continue paying for the schooling of illegal immigrants.

“What this legislation does is change the venue of the debate,” he said. “States pay 95% of the cost of public education. Yet the federal government mandates that they provide a free education to illegal immigrants without any reimbursement.”

Although both candidates support tightening immigration security at the border, Unruhe said he believes the government should focus more attention on what he considers the real source of the problem: the employers who hire illegal immigrants.

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“We need to crack down on employers,” he said. “It’s the only thing that is ever going to work. The reason people come here is to work. And employers like to have cheap labor.”

Conversely, Unruhe said immigrant labor is essential to the nearly $1-billion annual agricultural economy of Ventura County.

“They’re doing the labor in this county that other people won’t do,” he said. “It’s essential labor that’s often overlooked. But if it suddenly disappeared there would be an economic crisis in this county.”

But Gallegly said illegal immigrants are costing California taxpayers tens of millions of dollars because of the free health and education benefits they receive.

He said he agreed with Unruhe that government should go after employers who hire illegal immigrants, assessing stiff fines and criminal penalties in repeat cases. But he said illegal immigrants should be dealt with as well.

“I don’t think we should aggressively punish employers and then release these people,” he said. “We should deport them.”

On other issues, Unruhe criticized Gallegly for distributing a recent mailer that lists what appears to be a Sierra Club endorsement of the congressman as a “clean air champion.”

“First of all, that’s a misrepresentation,” Unruhe said. “The Sierra Club is supporting me.”

Indeed, Jeffrey Auerbach, chairman of the Los Padres chapter of the Sierra Club, said Gallegly’s campaign brochure is grossly misleading.

“Gallegly is an environmental disaster,” Auerbach said. “He voted against the environment 92% of the time in the past two years.”

Gallegly defended his campaign literature and his environmental record. He said he received a plaque from the Sierra Club in 1987, commending him for his support of a clean-air bill.

But Gallegly said he has been active on a number of environmental issues over the years, including supporting a continued moratorium on offshore oil drilling in some of the most environmentally sensitive areas along the California coast.

“I believe I’m an environmentalist,” he said. “I believe we must preserve the environment, but not at an expense that prohibits people from living in it.”

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The objective of environmental extremists is not to protect the environment but to stop growth, Gallegly said. Efforts to save the endangered kangaroo rat, for instance, halted a housing project in San Bernardino County that would have created 10,000 jobs, he said.

“People talk about the kangaroo rat as being an endangered species,” he said. “But nobody talks about human beings as being an endangered species. Frankly, I’m more concerned about my 1-month-old granddaughter’s future than a kangaroo rat, and I will continue to be.”

Other candidates in the 23rd Congressional District race include Stephen Hospodar of the Natural Law Party and Libertarian Gail Lightfoot.

Voters in the district, however, are nearly evenly split among the two major parties, with Democrats making up 43% of the electorate, contrasted with 42% for Republicans.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Seeking his sixth term in Congress,

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) faces Democratic challenger Bob Unruhe, Stephen Hospodar of the Natural Law Party and Libertarian Gail Lightfoot.

Elton Gallegly

Age: 52

Occupation: Congressman

Residence: Simi Valley

Party: Republican

Education: High school diploma, attended Los Angeles State College

Background: A resident of Simi Valley for 27 years, Gallegly was a real estate broker and small-business man before entering politics full time. He was elected to the Simi Valley City Council in 1979 and was the city’s mayor from 1980 to 1986. Gallegly was first elected to Congress in 1986. He is the only nonlawyer on the House Judiciary Committee and also sits on the Foreign Affairs and Natural Resources committees.

Issues: An avowed conservative, Gallegly favors cutting taxes, cutting government spending, balancing the budget and fighting crime and drugs. He is a leading member of Congress seeking to halt illegal immigration by strengthening border patrols, toughening laws and allowing states to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants, including banning them from public schools. He opposes abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or threat to a woman’s life.

Gail Lightfoot

Age: 59

Occupation: Registered nurse

Residence: Pismo Beach

Party: Libertarian

Education: Completed nursing program at the Los Angeles County Hospital School of Nursing, took courses at junior colleges in the Los Angeles area

Background: A resident of San Luis Obispo County, Lightfoot is chairwoman of the Libertarian Party of California. She has been active in the party since 1990 and has run for Congress three times against Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas). A public health nurse, she organized a protest against mandatory continuing education for nurses, calling it an invasion of individual rights.

Issues: Lightfoot wants government to stay out of abortion decisions but offer expectant mothers safe havens for adoption. She favors replacing government subsidies of schools with unlimited tax credits to individuals or businesses that cover a student’s tuition. She wants to get tough on real crime, remove all victimless crime law from the books and open U.S. borders to individuals who want to come without asking for a handout.

Stephen P. Hospodar

Age: 53

Occupation: Marketing director

Residence: Carpinteria

Party: Natural Law

Education: Bachelor’s degree in law and political science, Kent State University, Ohio; master’s degree in business administration from Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa

Background: Hospodar is operations director of a small publishing house for nautical books and charts. Before moving to Carpinteria 4 1/2 years ago, he was the director of Transcendental Meditation centers and Ayurvedic Health Centers in various cities. He continues to teach TM part time and was one of the founders of the local Natural Law Party. This is his first bid for public office.

Issues: He wants to shift from “disease care” to health care, emphasizing prevention of illness and allowing federal coverage of alternative medicine. He favors a holistic approach to reducing crime and drug addiction, including meditation and other techniques to reduce stress--which he considers the root cause of crime. With reduced crime and illness, he believes the government can slash taxes, stimulate the economy and balance the budget.

Bob Unruhe

Age: 73

Occupation: Retired teacher

Residence: Ojai

Party: Democrat

Education: Bachelor’s degree in history, USC; master’s degree in political science and education, USC

Background: An Ojai resident for 17 years, Unruhe is a retired high school government and civics teacher. He was a Culver City councilman from 1956 to 1966 and for the past three years represented Ventura County in the Senior Legislature. He served 11 years on the Ojai Parks and Recreation Commission and is a director of Food Share, the county’s nonprofit food bank.

Issues: Unruhe vows to protect Social Security and Medicare from budget cuts. He wants more federal dollars for educational programs like Headstart, job training and college loans. He favors increasing the minimum wage and strengthening laws to protect clean air and water. He backs the president’s plan to hire more police. He supports cracking down on illegal immigration, but opposes banning any child from public schools. He supports abortion rights.