California’s 24th Congressional District deserves a better representative than Salud Carbajal. I am running against Carbajal because he does not represent the majority of Central Coasters but rather the Democratic National Committee donor class, one percenter oligarchs who effectively run both parties and, by extension, the country.
Salud Carbajal is a quintessential self-interested politician. He does not deserve to serve our district in Congress because, based on his record and rhetoric, he cares more about his status within the Democratic Party Establishment than he does his relationship with his working class constituents. For the past decade, Salud Carbajal has really only been looking out for himself by protecting his job through continued support from wealthy donors. According to OpenSecrets.org, Salud Carbajal’s office has $3.3 million of cash on hand.
Stop the presses! On May 3, Salud Carbajal announced that he will no longer take campaign contributions from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and that he will stop funding weapons to Israel. He made this promise at his Grover Beach Town Hall in front of more than 150 of his constituents. What should Central Coasters’ reaction to this news be? “Too little, too late!” To be specific, this position shift comes three years and 70,000 Palestinian deaths too late and Carbajal still hasn’t proven that he’s committed to an Anti-Zionist position.
How can Salud Carbajal sleep at night knowing that the people of Ventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, and surrounding areas are living on the streets while his office has millions in the bank and continues to receive blood money from the military industrial complex? On Monday, he stated that he has received “nominal amounts” of contributions from numerous weapons manufacturers. In his decade of “service” as our congressmember, he has received just under $300,000 from defense contractors. The question is this: When he votes to support continued military budgets, as he does every year, does Carbajal consider that these votes do nothing more than fuel America’s War Machine or does he just think growing that cash-on-hand account is more important than that kind of consideration?
With the complete decimation of Gaza and now the war on Iran and Lebanon, the American people are tired of spending billions of dollars a day on war in the Middle East. While we struggle to pay our rent, fill our gas tanks, and put food on the table, how can we accept that “public servants” such as Salud Carbajal are complicit in the murder of hundreds of innocent school children, destroying sacred cultures, and displacing millions of innocent civilians as refugees?
Salud Carbajal comes from the political tradition of bipartisanship. His record, rhetoric, and membership in the Problem Solvers Caucus prove as much. The military industrial complex and AIPAC thrive within the context of bipartisanship, and Carbajal personifies how and why both defense contractors and the government of Israel play both sides of our political aisle.
Because of his continued celebration of bipartisanship, it stands to reason that Salud Carbajal doesn’t realize that America is at war with herself! Trump and his MAGA thugs are waging war on immigrants, the environment, and even the very soul of our democracy. I am running for Congress to execute a political counterattack the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since Bill Clinton lost both Houses of Congress in the 1994 midterms.
The major tenets of my campaign advocate for conquering conservatism and replacing it with progressivism. As a House Rep, I would seek to abolish ICE and abolish AIPAC, the latter of which would lead to a larger conversation about campaign finance reform. I would prosecute MAGA leadership, impeach or remove Trump-appointed judges, starting with the Supreme Court justices, and tax the rich, starting with the billionaires. As I and other progressives of Congress lead the charge on defeating MAGA once and for all, we will concurrently offer the American public an alternative version of our society that derives from FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, also known as FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights. If we progressives come to power, American citizens will enjoy a right to healthcare, a right to employment, a right to housing, a right to education, protections for both farmers and farmworkers along with a handful of other rights whose modern application will have to be debated.
Central Coasters are educated, experienced, and diverse. We know when someone is not measuring up to our standards, and we also know that sometimes someone doesn’t measure up because they have the wrong motivations. If we continue to allow Democratic Party establishment figures such as Salud Carbajal to remain in power, we will never get the systemic change we deserve, the systemic change we need to survive and thrive in the most beautiful district in the entire country.
I will strive to replace MAGA fascism with righteous problem-solving progressivism, but first I need your help to defeat a bipartisan moderate who claims to serve you but, in truth, has spent his entire time in office serving himself. Show up for me, Helena Pasquarella, on June 2, and I’ll show up for you for the rest of my life.
Congressional candidate Helena Pasquarella is director of The US Department of Peace in Ojai. David W. Tarr is her campaign manager.
