Five make case to succeed Olsen in 12th Assembly District race

All five candidates vying to succeed outgoing Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen say they’re passionate about representing the interests of the Valley.

The 12th Assembly District covers eastern Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties and includes Turlock, Salida, Ripon, Manteca, Lathrop and part of Modesto. It’s considered a conservative seat, with 87,265 registered Republican voters to 71,009 Democrats, and 52.4 percent voted for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, compared with 45.1 percent for President Barack Obama.

Three of the candidates – Heath Flora, Cindy Marks and Ken Vogel – are Republican, while Harinder Grewal and Virginia Madueño are Democrat.

Olsen, a Republican from Riverbank, is running unopposed for a Stanislaus County supervisor’s seat. She won’t issue an endorsement in the June primary; the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will move on to the November election.

Heath Flora

At 32, Flora by far is the youngest candidate in this race, and the only one never elected to public office. The $103,000 he has raised is in the middle of the pack.

“Our generation needs to step up and get involved, building relationships with folks,” he said.

Vogel’s lawsuit – persuading a Sacramento judge to remove “farmer” as one of Flora’s occupations on the official ballot – was a low political strategy, Flora said, but has no bearing on Flora’s fliers. All portray him as a farmer and firefighter; his family has farmed several decades in the Wood Colony area west of Modesto, and he is a volunteer battalion chief with the Woodland Avenue Fire District west of Modesto.

“We’ve done a good job at not selling out who we are,” Flora said.

He works in family orchard-management services and nut-harvesting equipment sales, and sells firefighting forcible-entry equipment. He said he believes California’s true strength lies in the health of small business and pledges to cut bureaucracy and red tape.

“Let’s get out of the way and let people do their job,” he said.

Cindy Marks

Marks is best known as the longest-serving Modesto City Schools board member, having joined that panel in 1997 and won five consecutive elections along the way.

“It’s been great to have support from the community,” she said.

Three years ago, delegates from 1,000 school districts throughout California elected Marks to serve a year as president of the California School Boards Association. That position gave her contact with Gov. Jerry Brown and other legislative leaders, and whetted her appetite for a higher level of service.

“I realized the laws they make in Sacramento have a dramatic effect on what we do in our communities,” Marks said. “My goal is having a greater voice in Sacramento to ensure our values are adhered to.”

Marks grew up on a small Escalon ranch but has not laid claim to the “farmer” status label fought over by other candidates. She does have small-business experience as an owner of the eight-store Rogers Jewelry Co., started by her husband’s grandfather.

Her $31,445 in political contributions is the smallest amount among the five candidates.

“The more we work together,” Marks said, “the better decisions we make. You don’t accomplish anything if you make enemies. My goal is to find common ground. I am a consensus builder.”

Ken Vogel

Vogel is the only candidate in his 70s – in fact, no other has reached his or her 60s. His elected-office experience – school board in Linden, county supervisor in San Joaquin County – goes back decades, and he has a lengthy pedigree of service on various water agencies.

Vogel, a retired school principal, raises cherries and walnuts, and he’s the only military veteran among the five candidates.

“I think I have a broad breadth of experience,” Vogel said, “and I work well with people.”

Vogel, a Stockton resident, is the only candidate whose base is outside Stanislaus County. Hoping to build name recognition here, he has attended Republican Party and other events throughout the county for nearly two years.

“I’ve worked hard to get to know people, one at a time,” he said. “Besides talking to people, you need to listen to people. That’s what I’ve tried to do.”

With $167,000, Vogel’s campaign war chest dominates the others and is more than the combined total of his GOP opponents, Flora and Marks, and he enjoys many high-level endorsements, including several from elected officials in Stanislaus County.

Harinder Grewal

Among the five candidates, Grewal leans furthest to the left; he stands alone in advocating marijuana legalization, high-speed rail and universal health care.

Grewal is the only candidate who has previously run for this Assembly seat, having lost to Olsen in 2014. He’s also the only candidate this year who doesn’t own a small business, and is the most enthusiastic about labor union support.

“It’s a blessing to have the endorsement of these hardworking men and women,” said Grewal, a county agricultural inspector and part-time agribusiness instructor at California State University, Stanislaus. “Voters have a crystal-clear choice of who can connect with other Assembly members in Sacramento.”

Raised and educated in India, Grewal came to the United States 25 years ago.

He has played a part in a contentious dispute over leadership at the Turlock Sikh Temple that led to violence in January. A court ruling late last year favored Grewal’s group, saying others illegally seized control of temple leadership, although that faction has appealed and the case is ongoing.

“The court found the testimony of Harinder Grewal to be particularly credible,” Stanislaus Superior Court Judge John Freeland wrote in his judgment. A temporary restraining order granted to a man who said he was assaulted by Grewal’s group has since been lifted.

Virginia Madueño

Madueño first came into the public eye in 1998 as spokeswoman for Stanislaus County, but most people probably remember her as mayor of Riverbank. She was serving on the City Council when elected to fill the remaining term of a previous mayor, and was narrowly ousted by current Mayor Richard O’Brien in 2012.

She also owns Imagen, a public-relations firm she founded in 2003, and was appointed by Brown in 2013 to serve on the California Commission on Boating and Waterways.

As the daughter of immigrants from Mexico, “I understand the true inherent value of what it is to make it in this country,” she said.

Among the five candidates, Madueño most strongly supports the idea of extended Altamont Corridor Express passenger trains into Stanislaus County.

Her $110,406 is the second-highest amount raised among the five candidates, and nearly twice that of the other Democratic candidate, Grewal. She enjoys a long list of endorsements.

“I’m doing this to make a difference,” Madueño said. “I want to make sure the next generation has an opportunity to succeed and excel.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2016 at 4:55 PM with the headline "Five make case to succeed Olsen in 12th Assembly District race."