Campos responds to resident’s letter to editor

Editor- inmaricopa.com,

Thanks for permitting me to address Mr. Garcia’s questions about my candidacy. And, thanks for once again giving me space to explain that I did not respond to the original questionnaire because I never saw it. Don’t know what happened, just one of those issues we all face with lost e-mail stuff. But I have endeavored to address campaign issues with your constituency through other communications, and thanks to David Garcia (see related letter to the editor) for providing me the opportunity to speak to the issues once again.

I’m not certain who David Garcia is, and I apologize for that. When I looked in my directory I could not find a listing, and when I looked up voter registrations I found a dozen David Garcias, but none of them lived in Maricopa. I did find a David Garcia from Maricopa who was involved in a lawsuit from a vehicle accident; don’t know if this is the author of the op-ed. I did find a new home purchaser named David Garcia from May of this year in Cobblestone Farms. If this is he, or if not, and if he did get registered to vote, he should be voting against all the Pinal County incumbents who have driven our taxes so high. Looks like a nice house, but it’s a crime that the value today has dropped so much from when he bought it just a few months ago. Everyone should vote out the incumbents for that reason also.

That’s one of the reasons why I’m running for the State Senate against Rebecca Rios. From the tone in his letter I probably am not getting his vote, if he has one this election cycle, but maybe his letter will help me pick up a few other supporters.

When Rebecca Rios was first elected to the Senate in 2004 she came into office with the advantage of a Republican-majority created budget and surplus that filled the state’s coffers to overflowing with a billion dollar surplus. When she and the Governor were re-elected in 2006 they managed to reduce the majority of Republicans in the legislature sufficiently that it permitted them to create their own budgets and get just enough cross-over votes to pass the budgets over the objections of the majority of the Republican legislators. They have since spent the money like drunken sailors. Just this last year the entire Democrat caucus and just four Republicans passed the Governors and Rios’s budget. All other Republicans voted against the budget because it spent way too much money against all projected revenue sources. There is no such thing as a “revenue short-fall,” just overspending. In just two short years Rebecca Rios and her cronies have drained a half-billion dollars from the Rainy Day Fund and driven the state into the hole by what many estimate will be one and a half billion dollars before session begins again.

Just how do you do that and expect to be re-elected, and why would we re-elect someone who so casually spent our hard-earned tax dollars into oblivion?

Which brings me to the other issue in his letter; I have been a private businessman all my life who is tired of being over-regulated, overtaxed, and over-infringed by my government. I believe that our government is too big and needs to be downsized. I believe in the free speech he exercised in his letter and in the free speech that my clients have exercised in the operations of their businesses. I will defend all the rights of all citizens as your legislator. Or as Barry Goldwater put it: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” I will get the government off the backs of my fellow citizens and business professionals. I will make the government work harder and smarter.

David’s question about whether business people have choices about their businesses sounds a little naive. Apparently he has never had to cover payroll and make sure employees have a place to report to work every Monday morning. I have not ever engaged in any illegal activity as Rebecca and David have intimated, and, like you, I have to make my mortgage and pay my outrageous tax bill on my over-encumbered home also.

As to my family values they’re just like yours. I live my life exercising the difference in right from wrong and instill the values in my home we all learned from our parents, our faiths and our heritages.

The bottom line here is that Rebecca Rios has decided to make government her career and in the process make certain that government grows every year. It’s my intention to return the state government to what our constitution says it’s supposed to be and help return the legislature to its purpose. As Ronald Reagan said, the nine scariest words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” The same people that got us in this mess can’t get us out– they don’t know how.

Please vote for the future of your home and your family. Vote for change. Vote for all the Republicans on the county ticket. Vote for my running mates John Fillmore and Frank Pratt in the LD 23 House race and vote for me, Andre Campos for State Senate.

Andre Campos
LD23 Senate Candidate

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Photo by Jake Johnson