Star Parker's Town Hall draws Democrats and Republicans 

By Paul Eakins, Staff Writer, Long Beach Press-Telegram 

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In a town hall gathering that began and ended with a prayer, Republican Congressional candidate Star Parker revealed her stances on hot button political issues Thursday night. 

More than 70 people, both Republicans and Democrats, gathered in the Juanita Millender-McDonald Community Center, named after the deceased congresswoman whose former 37th District seat Parker hopes to fill Nov. 2. 

To do so, Parker will have to defeat Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Long Beach, a former Long Beach council member and state Assembly member who is running for her second full term. Also running is independent candidate Nick Dibs. 

Parker, a nationally syndicated columnist who operates a non-profit think tank, told the crowd that she believes in "market-based solutions" to poverty and the problems of minority communities. 

The 37th District encompasses some of the most diverse communities in the country and includes most of Long Beach, Carson, Compton, Signal Hill and parts of Los Angeles. 

The candidate said she is running for office because government dependency has "gripped" the black community, because she wants to create more varied educational opportunities and because she wants to attract business investment to the area. She touted her experience as a small-business owner in the past and now running her non-profit agency. 

"I make payroll. I actually pay my mortgage, too," Parker said in an obvious dig at Richardson's well-publicized financialtroubles in 2008, when her Sacramento home went into foreclosure. 

Richardson later recovered the home after it had already been sold by the bank at auction, which led to a House ethics probe. The congresswoman was cleared of any wrongdoing this year. 

Parker's final reason for running, she said: "Ultimately, this community deserves somebody who really cares about them." 

Of course, Parker isn't actually from the 37th District community, having only moved to Long Beach's Bixby Knolls neighborhood earlier this year before the primary election. Before that, she split her time between San Clemente and Washington, D.C. 

That issue didn't come up Thursday, and the crowd quickly warmed up to the candidate, who has described herself as a former drug user and welfare recipient who found Christ. 

As she answered the crowd's questions, Parker's stance on some polarizing issues stood out. 

Chief among her priorities is to abolish welfare, making up for the need to help the poor by creating a "charity tax credit" to encourage people to donate to charities, she said. 

Parker said she is against abortion, supports the death penalty, is against high taxes, supports maintaining national defense funding, supports building a fence on the southern U.S. border, and wants to rework the national healthcare reform bill. 

The federal stimulus package was just another, fiscally irresponsible form of creating "government dependency," and labor unions are a "dated model" of doing business that no longer functions, she said. 

Most of these views sound like they come out of a Republican candidate how-to guide, but Parker said voters should worry less about political parties and more about the candidates themselves. 

That seemed to be exactly how some in the crowd saw it. 

Sure, people like self-described "staunch Republican" Art Guzman, a 71-year-old Long Beach retiree, were at the event. Guzman said he was impressed by Parker's knowledge and concise answers to some very specific questions. 

However, the crowd also included people like Nellie Lua, a Carson resident and retired city worker, who said that despite being a Democrat, she was leaning toward voting for Parker because of Richardson's financial problems and the ethics probe. 

Lua nodded in agreement as her friend, another Democrat and labor union member who for that very reason didn't want to give her name, described Richardson: "As far as I'm concerned, she's tainted."