Bullock announces campaign plans for State Assembly

At the end of the school year, Dennis Bullock will step down as dean of students at Providence High School in Burbank in order to devote more time to his political career.

Bullock, who’s been a teacher at the school for a decade and has been dean of students for four years, announced last month he plans to run for the 43rd California State Assembly District seat Mike Gatto (D-Glendale) will vacate in 2016 due to term limits.

Bullock said he’s “undoubtedly the underdog,” in the race, which is likely to be hotly contested.

So far, at least five contenders have announced their intent to run for the seat, including Glendale City Councilwoman Laura Friedman, Glendale City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian and La Cañada Unified School District Governing Board President Andrew Blumenfeld.

Rajiv Dalal, former deputy film czar for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, has also announced his intent to run for the seat and announced this month that he had already raised well over $250,000 to fund his campaign.

Kassakhian had more than $144,000 in his campaign fund at the end of 2014, and Friedman had a war chest of $74,000, according to filings with the Secretary of State.

“I’m going to be outspent,” Bullock said. “I can guarantee it.”

He will continue to teach part time in the social studies department, said Joe Sciuto, head of school at Providence High. Bullock originally discussed his plans with the administration last August, he said.

While the school, a ministry of Providence Health & Services, isn’t officially backing Bullock, Sciuto said he personally wishes him well.

“You don’t always get to follow your dreams [but] he’s following his,” said Sciuto, who hired Bullock for the dean position four years ago. He added that Bullock is “one of the most honest, intelligent men I’ve met in my career.”
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Editor’s Note: The school isn’t officially backing Bullock because it is a ministry of Providence Health & Services, which has a policy of remaining nonpartisan.
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Sciuto said that if the campaign doesn’t work out, “Dennis will always have a home” at Providence.

According to his campaign announcement, Bullock was born in Burbank, grew up in Silver Lake and Atwater Village, and attended Providence High School. He has a master’s in politics from Claremont Graduate University and has lived in Burbank since 1999.

Though he said he’s well-known mostly in the “small universe” of Providence High, Bullock said he’s hoping to “expand that universe” campaigning on his ideas. He said that’s the only way to see if they resonate with voters.

Ideas such as revisiting a plan proposed in the 1990s to build a pipeline from Alaska to California to bring in not oil, but fresh water.

He also has a proposal to create tax incentives that would encourage corporations to pump some of their wealth into California’s public schools.

Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles, said it’s good for candidates to have ideas or something to say, but to be competitive they need a following — or the resources to get a following.

Sonenshein said he wasn’t familiar with Bullock or his campaign and couldn’t comment on it specifically, but he said that, in general, there’s room for a “breath of fresh air” in politics. However, “there’s a thin line between being a breath of fresh air and [being] an amateur.”

Sonenshein said he’s learned it’s a bad idea to make predictions, and with an open seat, “anything can happen.”

“You just don’t know until somebody gets out there,” he said.