Charles Cole opposes high taxes, overregulation
Santa Barbara native Charles Cole, seen here speaking during Saturday’s Teen Talk rally, is running for the 37th District Assembly seat because he feels California is moving into the wrong direction.
Charles Cole isn’t pleased with the direction in which California is headed, citing high taxes, overregulation on businesses, and one-sided politics in the public education system as key issues that he wants to address as a state Assemblyman for the 37th District, for which he is running as a Republican candidate.
The 22-year-old is running against Democratic candidate and Ventura County District 1 supervisor Steve Bennett.
“What I plan to do is a ‘no’ vote on anything that raises taxes, over-regulates businesses and puts more Marxist indoctrination into public schools,” Mr. Cole told the News-Press.
Citing that 1,200 regulations on businesses were passed in California last year, Mr. Cole remarked that working toward deregulation will be his very first order of business should he be elected in November.
“I’m going there to repeal burdensome regulations on businesses so I’d like to get a jump start on that,” he said.
A believer that taxes are being raised too much on everybody including businesses, Mr. Cole opposes Prop. 15, which would amend the California State Constitution to require commercial and industrial properties with more than $3 million in holdings be taxed based on their market value rather than their original purchase price as ruled under Prop 13.
Mr. Cole stated, “I don’t believe in any tax hikes of any kind. I would go as far to say no new taxes, period.”
Concerned about ballooning debt, the candidate believes Sacramento is in desperate need of fiscal responsibility, people who “can actually balance a checkbook,” as he put it. While he’s in favor of cutting government spending, Mr. Cole thinks the government needs to learn how to properly allocate funds first.
“If you can’t allocate money properly to what is in the state, then that’s exactly why we’re in the hole we are now,” he said.
Born in Santa Barbara to a patented designer and builder father and a bookkeeper mother, Mr. Cole attended Santa Barbara High School and then went to Santa Barbara City College to study accounting and financing. While in college, he started to see public education turn into what he called a “Marxist indoctrination farm” through curriculum steeped in political correctness and critical race theory.
These included programs held through the nonprofit Just Communities Central Coast, which has had a controversial introduction into Santa Barbara’s public education system. Last month, nonprofit Fair Education dropped a discrimination lawsuit against the Santa Barara Unified School District and JCCC that alleged the latter’s curriculum was anti-white, anti-Christian and anti-male. Fair Education intends to appeal a Santa Barbara Superior Court opinion dismissing its bidding claim.
Mr. Cole disapproves of JCCC’s curriculum and how its programs in some cases split students into different groups based on race. The candidate remarked that such race-focused curricula sends an ultimately unhelpful message to students.
“It’s just telling people, ‘Oh, you can’t do this because of your race,’” he said.
To counter this, he intends on sponsoring legislation that will “restore empiricism and sanity to replace the delusional feelings in the state’s curriculum,” and thereby result in improving California students’ abilities to think critically and objectively.
Outside of politics, Mr. Cole enjoys boarding of all kinds from surfing to snowboarding. He also keeps a sharp eye on the economy because he is an avid stock/options day trader.
Mr. Cole also enjoys music and used to sing lead vocals in a band, which is an activity he hopes to resume at some point in the future.
email: jgrega@newspress.com
