Congressman Mike Garcia is just about everything the Republican Party seems to want in its next generation of leaders. A Latino and former U.S. Navy fighter pilot, Garcia had to win two separate elections in 2020 to secure his Santa Clarita House seat – and now he’s facing an incredibly tight race to keep it.
Garcia joined KNX News’ daily political show Countdown 2024 to talk about his reelection campaign’s chances against Democrat George Whitesides.
Listen here:
“I'm in a district as a Republican where the party registration of my own party, the Republican party, is only 29%,” he said. “So what that tells you is that I'm winning a good portion of not only the Republican party, the 29% of my district, but also the Democrat party and the majority of the independents and the no party preference votes.”
He said his campaign is doing so well because he doesn’t “make it about party politics,” focusing instead on the unifying issue of “security.”
“I'm willing to negotiate, I'm willing to compromise,” Garcia said. “I think civil discourse and the mud-slinging is unnecessary right now. We have real threats called China and Russia, and we need to unite as Americans and come together.”
Garcia, the son of a Mexican immigrant who came to the country legally, has called illegal immigration one of the nation’s biggest security threats. But he didn’t support the Senate’s bipartisan border security bill, saying that it didn’t adequately “fix the leak” of illegal immigration.
“If you're a supporter of DACA and the dreamers and a pathway to citizenship, which I am, your number one priority should be securing the border,” he said. “Because what's happening is these people who have been here now for 35 years who came here as kids and didn't know they were even here illegally are now getting cut in line by 15 million people who are knowingly breaking the law, and some of them aren't good people.”
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Listen to the full episode above to hear an interview with Los Angeles County DA George Gascón, who’s also fighting for his political life in November. Catch new episodes of Countdown 2024 live at 2:30 p.m. every weekday through Election Day.
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