California’s 49th Congressional District, covering the northwest corner of San Diego County and the southern swath of Orange County, is one of the nation’s most closely watched House races. The decision of incumbent Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, to not seek re-election led to a wild free-for-all of a primary with 16 candidates. The two who advanced — Democratic environmental lawyer Mike Levin and Republican state Board of Equalization member Diane Harkey, both from Orange County — offered sharp contrasts in interviews with The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board.

Levin was better on several big issues — including gun violence prevention, nuclear waste storage and his dissection of how President Donald Trump encouraged intolerance and Republican recklessness on the environment. Voters can have hope that Levin would grow into the job.

But we are concerned about his approach to the immense national debt that is on track to triple the amount that is spent just to pay for debt service over the next decade. Not only do the Republicans who used to be budget hawks not care about this emerging disaster, Democrats like Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii say that if the GOP can blithely run trillion-dollar deficits, why shouldn’t Democrats be similarly blithe when they control Washington and pursue goals like Medicare for all and free college? America desperately needs sane moderates who want to put away the national credit cards.

In his interview, Levin said he was “deeply concerned” about the deficit but then went on to say that not only did he oppose raising the retirement age for Social Security — an easy, relatively painless fix given the improved health of those in their late 60s — he called for “strengthening,” i.e. increasing, these benefits. He said upping the income on which Social Security taxes are paid to more than $250,000 — it’s now $128,400 — “would go a long way towards shoring up Social Security for decades.” That’s just not true. America is on track to have two people working for every one person on Social Security. Something’s got to give. There are no easy answers.


What is clear, though, is how ill-equipped Harkey is for this job. As a Board of Equalization member, she was rebuked for using staff members to burnish her image, including having 98 board employees staff a conference in her district called “Connecting Women to Power.” This and other problems led Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature to remove most of the major duties of the board.

Yet even though a Democrat on the board, Jerome Horton, faced even sterner criticism than she did, Harkey told the U-T board that she had been the victim of a “politically motivated” attack. This is in keeping with Harkey’s history of depicting any criticism of her record as a state legislator and a Dana Point official as unfair. While Levin responds in measured tones to criticism, Harkey is overly defensive.

We urge voters in the 49th district to support Mike Levin. He is the clear and easy choice.

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