State primary sees intense competition with extensive list of candidates

Westwood residents will see a long list of candidates with several front-runners when they head into polling stations to vote in the primary election Tuesday.

The ballot features a list of candidates for 11 statewide offices, one U.S. House of Representatives seat, three countywide offices and 15 judge positions at the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Voting will take place from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday. For each office, the two candidates with the most votes will advance to the general election in Nov. 4, regardless of their party affiliation.

The races for governor, the U.S. House and the state Senate are highly contested, each featuring several candidates vying for one seat.

Governor

There are 15 candidates running for governor, but current Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and Republicans Tim Donnelly and Neel Kashkari are considered front-runners for the two spots in the general election, according to a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.

For now, Brown appears to have a wide lead in the race for governor. He received support from 48 percent of those polled, compared to 15 percent for Donnelly and 10 percent for Kashkari, according to the poll.

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Click to find out the 18 candidates running for the 33rd Congressional District seat.

Many candidates running for governor think the state should create more jobs and improve its higher education system.

Donnelly, an assemblyman from Twin Peaks, is focused on making the state more business friendly by reducing taxes, said Art Haynie, a political strategist currently working for Donnelly’s campaign.

Kashkari also supports bringing more businesses to the state by lessening regulations and taxes, according to his campaign website.

Although Brown has steadily been allocating more funding to the University of California since the end of the recession, some candidates have said they think the state can take a dramatic step in changing its higher education systems beyond giving more funding to the UC.

In April, Kashkari proposed a plan to create programs to provide free tuition to science, technology, engineering or mathematics students in exchange for a share of their future income. For the UC and California State University systems, Kashkari also wants to increase the number of online courses offered and tie campus performance, including graduation rates, to the amount of funding schools receive from the state.

Congress

Eighteen candidates have declared their candidacy for the 33rd Congressional District, which includes Westwood, since the current representative Henry Waxman announced his plan to retire after this term. No polling numbers have been released recently, but the district is considered Democratic, according to a nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Ted Lieu, a Democrat and current state senator for the 26th Senate district, and Wendy Greuel, a Democrat businesswoman who placed second in the election for mayor of Los Angeles in 2013, are considered front-runners by political strategists and other political writers because of their name recognition. However, strong fundraising records from several candidates make the race more difficult to predict.

Many candidates for Congress have said they think higher education is too expensive and that students should not be saddled with a large amount of debt.

Candidates such as Matt Miller, a former public radio host and columnist who is running as a Democrat, said increasing grants for students will help students receive a college education. Greuel also argued for an increase in federal student aid, such as Pell Grants.

Some candidates, such as Marianne Williamson, an independent candidate and a best-selling author, and Barbara Mulvaney, a Democrat and international human rights lawyer, have said they want to encourage students to do public service by offering them a tuition-free education at universities if they complete a year of service.

Lieu, Greuel and Miller have said they want to decrease student loan interest rates.

Elan Carr, a Republican candidate and a criminal gang prosecutor, said the rapid rise in tuition for the UC in recent years happened because the state is failing to grow economically. He said he thinks the state could improve its economy by cutting taxes and loosening regulations.

State Senate

When Lieu, current state senator, announced plans to run for Congress, eight candidates quickly jumped to announce their candidacy for the 26th State Senate District, which includes Westwood. The district is considered heavily Democratic and shares a large amount of its voters with the 33rd Congressional District.

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Find out places to vote on and around campus.

Nearly all candidates said they think funding higher education should be a priority for the state, but candidates differed in their ideas for how to best fund universities.

Sandra Fluke, a social justice attorney running as a Democrat, and Betsy Butler, a former assemblywoman also running as a Democrat, said they think the state should put a greater emphasis on funding science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs.

Ben Allen, a school board member for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law and a former student regent for the 2007-2008 year, said his experience will help bring down the cost of higher education in the state. Allen said he thinks the legislature should have a stronger voice in controlling funding for higher education.

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