John MacMurray for Assembly

Background:

Lifelong Southern California resident.
Married since 1976 to Ida MacMurray; three sons, three grandchildren.
Public schools K-12, AA Fullerton Community College, BA Cal State Fullerton, M.Ed. University of Missouri.
Active in youth sports, Scouts, and lay church positions
Currently teach junior high school following career move from telecommunications and data processing.

Goals:

I am running for three large reasons: 1. My brothers and people like them
Both my brothers were born with cerebral palsy and had to spend much of their lives relying on state resources for their medical care. It is simply wrong for legislators to deny people with genuine needs the care they must have simply for partisan political gain.

2. My cousin and people like him
My cousin is a surgical nurse who was fired from the hospital where he had worked many years for trying to organize his fellow workers into a union. Such actions are illegal, not to mention unethical, but are allowed to stand. This must be changed.

3. The people of my District, of Orange County, and of California; who are being deprived of our future leadership and prosperity because of education cuts.
Public education supplies the professionals and leaders we need. Public education puts far more money back into the communities than goes in.
We are damaging our present and giving away our future by cutting resources to education.

Issues:

1. Quality, good-paying jobs. When I was growing up, Southern Californians built cars, tires, stoves, dish washers, refrigerators, commercial aircraft, and space craft.
There were opportunities to built careers, both starting from the shop floor and from more highly trained positions.
No longer.
There was a widespread base of small, mostly family owned businesses providing support parts and services to these companies. Mostly gone.
I worked on shop floors in different factories getting through high school and college, and I don’t see this type of opportunity around too much any more.

2. Education.
Public education pays back much more than it receives. If we are to have a viable future we must have a strong, diversified, and accessible education system.

3. Housing.
Having huge numbers of houses and apartment buildings in foreclosure benefits nobody. Neighborhoods, schools, and businesses all lose out when families have to leave. Logic says that there is some way to make sure people can stay in their homes.

Grassroots Support:

We ran for this office in 2006, our first attempt at public office. With about a dozen volunteers (no paid staff) we utilized the lessons learned at Camp Wellstone and DFA trainings to win over 36,000 votes; that was 38.6% of the total, on a 32.3% Democratic registration base.
We ran again using many of the same volunteers (again, no paid staff) and adding about two dozen more for precinct walking, phoning, and applying their talents to the electronic media. This time we won over 65,000 votes; that gave us 45.2% of the total, again on a 32.3% registration base.
These same volunteers and some more have come forward again.
We and our volunteers have also been working energetically on voter registration. Since we began in late 2005, we have added enough Democratic voters to reduce the spread between Democrats and Republicans from 15.8% to 9.55% currently. Our goal is to have the difference under 9% by the June 2010 primary elections.

DFA Values:

When I was growing up, my father was a Teamster truck driver and my mother taught public school. Most of our relatives and neighbors drove trucks or worked in factories making tires, airplanes, or cars.

From these people I learned the value and dignity of hard work, the value and importance of joining together in a union, and the importance of putting money aside for emergencies and rough times.

Both of my brothers were born with cerebral palsy and could not lead independent lives. They relied on state care for most of their lives but kept a cheerful and optimistic outlook.

From my brothers I learned about maintaining your personal dignity, and the value of a helping hand.