SAN JOSE—Marla Livengood, regulatory affairs manager for the California Strawberry Commission, is running for California’s Congressional District 10 as a Republican in a bid to unseat Democrat Rep. Josh Harder in 2020. In a recent interview with NTD News, she said that she would like to address a number of issues in the state.
“California has many challenges. I think between sanctuary states, between our high tax burden, between homelessness, we are really a place we’re seeing people flee, because the quality of life here is just going further and further down the tubes. And it’s something that we need to fix and we need to address quickly,” she said.
One example she gave was the shooting in Newman last December. A police officer was killed on duty by an illegal immigrant, who may have been protected under sanctuary policies.
“That was somebody that could have been taken off the streets, but wasn’t because the state of California has failed us with their poor policies. Laws have been put into place by the federal government and they need to be followed,” she said.
As a child, Livengood had heard of communism and the terror it brings to people. She can’t believe that now it is coming closer to reality in the United States.
“Today we have this democratic socialism that’s being talked about as if it’s a light, fluffy, good for everybody concept,” said Livengood. “But in reality, when we looked at places like Venezuela, when we looked at places that are socialist and communist, we know that it’s [a] horrific government. It’s a horrific way of governing and it has no place here in the US and no place for our values that we’ve been founded on.”
The full-time working mother was a candidate for California’s 9th Congressional District in 2018, but lost the general election. This year she’s running for District 10 in hopes of addressing some of the main local issues, like taxes and farming.
She intends to fully back the farmers in the district and ensure that their hard work is recognized and regulated reasonably.
“The EPA and USDA and the Food and Drug Administration have a lot of jurisdiction over the activities that the farmers do on their farm. So I will be there to champion for our farmers’ needs before those agencies,” she said.
“Having markets that they can send their products to, and making sure that have a fair trade deal. So that they’re able to fairly send over their products compete, and then also looking at the products coming into our country. Do the other countries have an unfair trade advantage that are making it so that our products with high labor costs, our higher input costs, that is making it unfair for our local farmers? And so I will have their back and champion for their needs and make sure that they have a fair deal and that they have somebody fighting for them because they support so many jobs in the tenth congressional district.”
Livengood is a graduate of CSU Fresno with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Economics, according to her campaign website. She also served as the Legislative Affairs Manager for the San Joaquin Regional Transit District, and the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors appointed her to the County Aviation Advisory Committee.
