Front Page  »  

Former Lois Capps supporter mounting 2014 challenge

December 3, 2013
Dale Francisco

Dale Francisco

A former liberal Lois Capps supporter is running as a conservative Republican against the15-year incumbent congresswoman.

Santa Barbara City Councilman Dale Fancisco announced at a San Luis Obispo North County Tea Party meeting Monday evening that he will run against Capps, and all other challengers, for California’s 24th Congressional seat in 2014.

“I’m living proof that a liberal can get his head right,” Francisco said

Francisco said he transformed from a liberal to a conservative over the course of many years. The process began with him reading the works of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman in college and accelerated as he worked as a software engineer for several computer networking companies, including Cisco Systems.

“I realized from the inside that corporations were not these evil entities that they are portrayed as in the liberal mind,” Francsico said. “People love their iPhones. People love their iPads. They are products of corporate America, and they are great products.”

The events of September 11, 2001 sealed his transformation to conservatism because he realized America really had enemies, Francisco said.

The Santa Barbara councilman said he lives five blocks away from Capps, and he runs into her on the street occasionally. Capps is a nice lady, but she needs to be replaced, he said.

“Lois Capps is one of the most fervent believers of Obamacare in Congress,” Francsico said. “She will go down with that ship, I believe.”

Francisco described Obamacare as a debacle and an arrogant attempt to take over 15 percent of the American economy.

He also said the United States must reverse its debt and suggested eliminating 10 federal departments.

Three thousand federal workers are wasting time and money simply figuring out cities’ prevailing wages, Francisco said.

Francisco said he is also conservative on social issues.

“I believe abortion is wrong. I don’t believe same sex marriage is marriage,” he said.

But, he said the federal government should not dictate moral issues and instead leave them to the states to decide.

Francisco said he plans to win the congressional seat in 2014 and reclaim it in 2016, alongside the election of a Republican president.

Former actor and conservative Republican, Chris Mitchum, has also announced plans to run for Capps’s seat. Mitchum lost to Capps and Abel Maldonado in the 2012 primary.

The top two finishers in the June 2014 primary, regardless of party, will advance to the November 2014 general election.

 


Loading...
Subjects:                         
Related:


23 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

As you may know if you listen to the Dave Congalton show where I started calling myself Chrisinpaso when I moved to the area and began calling his show, my name is Christopher Arend. I am active in the RPSLO. Tom Watson, who ran against Lois Capps in 2010 in the old “ribbon shame” district, introduced me to Dale Francisco not quite a year ago. I have had many opportunities to discuss the issues of the day with Dale, and I am convinced that he has a solid conservative philosophy. As I used to do when practicing law in the international business world, I did my due diligence on Dale, and I fully support his candidacy.


Dale is a man of intellect who made the transition from the liberalism to conservatism wellbefore he ever came to politics. (Perhaps the hostile comments here come from interpreting too much into the headline to the article.) A lot of us who call ourselves conservative made the same transition as we grew up. As the article points out, this transition started for Dale in college and continued as his career as a software engineer developed. Simply put: He learned from reality.


Dale’s active involvement in politics resulted from frustration with the then Santa Barbara city council*s policies, especially putting up road traffic obstacles. Dale was elected and reelected to the city council, and he has proven his ability to work constructively with other members of the city council who do not share his conservative philosophy by focusing on the specific issues without sacrificing principles.


I am convinced that Dale is the best candidate for Congress and that the voters will find him to be a very attractive candidate and an excellent Congressman.


0

Why would anyone listen to the congalton show?


0

Do not fall for this…in elections all over the nation there are pretenders like this dude inserted into Republican primary’s to muck things up. They claim to be Tea Party candidates but they are not. Anyone that supported Lois Capps is not going to get my vote and that is what they are counting on.


0

Fickle opportunists like Dale Francisco who let power and fear go to their head and want to deny adequate health care to the less fortunate are exactly the WRONG kind of people we want trying to lead us or make laws.


Spewing all the lame anti-liberal cliches in the world might make him a favorite of Rush Limbaugh and other bigoted extremists, but it is not the right fit for the Central Coast.


The fact that Mr. Francisco is so blatant about his condescending, rude attitude toward a great public servant like Lois Capps is despicable and suggests desperation and lack of foundation for his own campaign.


0

One word: Opportunist. He is like all the other politicians; do and say whatever is needed to gain power.


0

He is a reformed seen-the-light liberal? Where has he been since 2001? What are his votes like on the city council? Why has he NEVER shown up at any Republican events? There will be no shortage of candidates running against Lois Capps with the new open primary system. So we should all swoon over this guy because he makes some politically correct (conservatively speaking) statements? Give me a break.


0

Okay then, we know now who is going to be the sacrificial lamb on the Republican ticket against Lois Capps; of course, he still has to out-right anyone else who announces their intentions, but it sounds like this guy just might be the “rightest of the right” that can then lose to Lois, again.


0

Unfortunately, you are right on this. I would love to see a moderate Republican (policies similar to Maldonado or Achadjian) run against Capps because they would have a chance to beat her. However, the GOP right wing will actively oppose such a candidate even if it means turning off enough of the voters in the middle to ensure Capps victory.


I will not criticize her for the mess that is the ACA because she did try to do it right and was subverted by members of her own party who compromised it into a horrid mess in order to get “something” passed. However, she does too often toe the party line on other important issues and shows no leadership at all when it comes to fighting off oppressive legislation even when she does vote against it.


There is (or was) a Democrat named Paul Coyne who was going to run against her and sounded pretty good overall. However, he made it clear that he is an anti-abortion candidate which will pretty much seal his fate in this district despite his other good positions. (There is nothing morally wrong with his stand but it is in conflict with the values of too many voters in this district and remains a hot-button issue. He would have been wiser to call it a “low priority issue” and state that he would not try to change the status quo unless enough voters supported it to pass a Constitutional Amendment banning abortions.


0

On the surface, I like this guy. He has been in both the camp of the Liberals and the private sector. That could give him a better chance of bring down Capps, a real embarrassment to the central coast. More power to him.


0

Excuse me, but in what way has Lois Capps supposedly been “an embarrassment”?


By most accounts she had done her job and done it well.


I think you owe Lois Capps a HUGE apology. Shame on you!


0

Let’s start with her self-imposed term limit (she mis-spoke, kinda like her president) and end it with the experience of conversing with her, anyone that has, knows what I mean.

Come on, she has done absolutely nothing in her 6/7 terms but vote the party line. She is as independent as the food-stamp minions that have kept her in office . Time for a change, I hope.


0

If by change you mean the self inflicted gop death spiral, it is already in progress.


0

I’m willing to wager that this turncoat’s plan is to dilute the Republican votes simply as a parlor trick to get Lois back in the saddle again.


Frankly, ANYONE is better than Capps. Her complete ineptitude and inefficacy has only been trumped by her ability to stay in an office she so poorly manages.


As a former nurse and a standing member of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health, she has done ZERO to improve the quality of healthcare in the USA. As noted by the Institute of Medicine, about 100,000 to 250,000 people per year are killed in the US as a direct result of medical mistakes. Where’s the outcry?


Go home Lois.


0

Actually, Lois Capps has proven herself to be an amazingly wise politician, continually outmaneuvering and out campaigning and out performing some of the most expensive Republican candidates money can buy. Capps kicks their asses time and time again. They don’t have a clue.


0

This election will be a slightly different game than previous elections. The old “ribbon of shame” district was gerrymandered to give a roughly 20 point advantage in terms of voter registration to the Democrats. Nonetheless, Tom Watson came within roughly 3 percentage points of Lois Capps. The current district is much more balanced with only about 3 percentage points voter registration in favor of Democrats. Of course, that was also the situation in the last election, yet Abel Maldonado, who probably won the primary against Chris Mitchum in large part due to name recognition, was a very weak candidate.


0

As not a big fan of la Capps, I opine that this guy is the perfect example of a hypocritical,

self-serving creepish politico.


0
1 2