Jared Huffman for California Assembly, 6th District

Background:

I am a Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC); a local elected official with over 11 years experience governing Marin County's largest special district, Marin Municipal Water District; and a former civil rights attorney.

Goals:

I'm running to make sure that the 6th District has a strong progressive voice in the Assembly at an historic crossroad for our state, nation and planet. There is growing consensus that we may have only a decade to prevent catastrophic climate change within our children's lifetimes. That means the next Assembly member could have the LAST CHANCE to implement the necessary reforms to avert a crisis. Moreover, the next Assembly member must bolster state law to address a wide range of rollbacks and short-sighted policies by the Bush administration -- from endangered species and clean water protection, to public health safeguards, to public education, to civil rights and a woman's right to choose. In all of these areas, the next Assembly member must be able to hit the ground running and ready to lead, because time is short -- and so are Assembly terms.

My top 5 goals, not necessarily in order of priority, are:

1. Meeting the awesome environmental challenges and opportunities for California, including stopping global warming, building a sustainable economy for the 21st century, and providing ongoing environmental leadership and vision in the legislature
2. Ensuring cost-effective and universal health care for all Californians (and in turn, relieving businesses and consumers of the soaring costs and growing failures of our current healthcare system) by adopting a single payer system
3. Fixing our broken public education system (beyond just chronic underfunding -- the full range of problems)
4. Reforming our system of public finance (including split roll reform of Prop. 13)
5. Passing meaningful campaign finance reform so that we can take our Democracy back from the special interests, including a public campaign finance system tied to voluntary spending and contribution limits

Issues:

1. The Environment (in the broadest sense -- including the way we plan and develop our communities, public transportation, the state and local tax system and how that promotes/deters to smart growth, and our public health).
2. Healthcare reform
3. Education

Grassroots Support:

A huge role. Ours is a campaign of ideas, vision and purpose, which I intend to project to voters through a highly energized grassroots netowrk.

DFA Values:

1. Socially progressive: I have dedicated my professional career to advancing a progressive agenda, including nearly a decade of representing women and minorities in civil rights cases, and for the past five years serving as a Senior Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) fighting to protect our environment. I am the only candidate who has been putting it on the line for progressive issues every day, as a career, and producing major results -- from winning landmark legal victories, to stopping environmental rollbacks by he Bush administration, to passing laws in the California legislature.

2. Fiscally responsible: In my 11th year as a publicly elected Director of Marin County's largest special district (Marin Municipal Water District), I have a consistent record of streamlining and cost cutting, balanced budgets, and maintaining equitable water rates. My first acts on the MMWD board included rescinding a series of rate increases adopted by the previous board, instituting a hiring freeze, and cutting my own pay. These actions, and constant vigilence in the years that followed, have turned MMWD from a spendthrift public agency into a lean, highly accountable and fiscally solid organization. I am the only candidate with this kind of fiscal track record.