Mimi Robson
When asked by California LP state chair Ted Brown to mount a write-in campaign in the primary against unchallenged incumbent state senator, Ricardo Lara (D), Honor “Mimi” Robson seized the opportunity. She’s now in a two-way race in the state’s 33rd district, having survived the state’s top-two primary.
Robson, a structural engineer, told the Long Beach Post, which featured her campaign in June, that her first priority is to reduce or eliminate many of California’s 200-plus regulatory agencies and commissions that are “strangling local businesses and hurting our local economy.”
Robson cites the case of a client’s restaurant damaged by a fire. While its insurance policy covered the cost of rebuilding, upgrading to comply with stringent building codes and other standards was not covered, causing great hardship.
In striking contrast to Lara, who has proposed bills to extend Obamacare and MediCal, the state’s version of Medicaid, to cover noncitizens, Robson pledges to expand health freedom. She proposes to deregulate care clinics within pharmacies, which are available to anyone, “regardless of legal status, and it’s not costing the state anything,” she told LP News.
Robson vows to “never expand big government.” She aims to shift infrastructure spending away from projects such as “green” summits and high-speed rail (HSR) in favor of repairing aging water pipelines that, if they failed, would cause disastrous loss of much-needed water.
“The HSR is … never going to be built; no one’s ever going to ride on it; and it hasn’t even had one piece of track laid—but it has already cost a billion dollars,” she said.
Robson opposes adding to the state’s burgeoning debt and vows to never raise taxes.
“We’re told we have a ‘balanced budget’ thanks to [Gov.] Jerry Brown and all the tax increases of 2012,” she said. “Except: we’re $400 billion in debt because of the bond issues and unfunded pensions. Look at all the bonds and sales taxes on our November ballots—we need to not do that.”
Lara has a large war chest, with $1.5 million raised as of the end of July. But the more Robson meets constituents, the more she finds he’s “well-liked by politicians, but not by his constituents.”
Lara voted for every one of those gun bills—even the ones that Jerry Brown vetoed—the really ridiculous ones,” she said. “At one meeting I attended, I found there’s a large contingent of Pink Pistols, for whom Lara’s openly gay status is no advantage.”
In 2012, Lara’s alternative-party opponent did no campaigning, yet won 20 percent of the vote.
This year, Robson is turning up the heat.
Campaign website: www.HonorRobson.com
