Ahead of the November general election, the Southern California News Group compiled a list of questions to pose to the candidates who wish to represent you. You can find the full questionnaire below. Questionnaires may have been edited for spelling, grammar, length and, in some instances, to remove hate speech and offensive language.
MORE: Read all the candidate responses in our Voter Guide
Name: Daniel Jose Bocic Martinez
Current job title: Director of Legal Services, House of Ruth
Political party affiliation: Republican
Incumbent: No
Other political positions held: None
City where you reside: La Verne
Campaign website or social media: www.danmartinez4congress.com
Californians will decide on a proposition this November that would scale back some of Proposition 47, a 2014 voter-approved measure that reduced penalties for certain theft and drug offenses. What is one way the federal government could help states like California balance criminal justice reform with enforcing the law? (Please be specific with your proposal, and keep your answer to 200 words or less.)
The Federal government can balance criminal justice reform with enforcement of the criminal law by conditioning federal grants on sane criminal justice reform.
Specifically, criminal laws can be broken down into 3 categories:
1) Crimes with human victims where there physical body is penetrated/damaged/threatened without consent;2) Crimes with human victims where there is property damage;3) Crimes with no human victims, herein referred to as regulatory infractions (ie personal drug use).
Sane criminal justice reform would handle category 3 as a civil violation (ie no restriction of liberty of the perpetrator, ie no prison/incarceration).
This would clear up the backlog in the prison/jail system for those who violate categories 1 and 2.
The penalties in the criminal code regarding Category 2 should be restored to their pre-Prop 47 levels and consistently implemented.
The penalties for category 1 should be maximally implemented.
Sane criminal justice reform involves taking a “scalpel” approach to category 3, and not the present irresponsible “shotgun approach” implemented by Prop 47, and even more troubling, through discretionary action of the present Los Angeles District Attorney Gascon.
Recent efforts to expand the federal deduction for state and local taxes, called SALT, have failed. What changes would you like to see, if any, to SALT? (Please keep your answer to 200 words or less.)
SALT deductions should be permanently restored in full. The failure of our present leaders to reinstate SALT deductions is a disgrace. Given that the limitations of SALT deductions were imposed as part of budget reconciliation, they will automatically sunset in 2025 and revert to their pre-2017 levels. They should be allowed to Sunset, if not restored sooner.
My opponent failed to address SALT when he represented the Orange County district where he and his family had roots before he embarked on a carpetbagging campaign through my hometown to buy my neighbors votes with his lottery winnings.
President Joe Biden has called for an overhaul of the U.S. Supreme Court, including mandatory ethics rules. What reforms, if any, do you believe the Supreme Court needs, and how would they be enforced? (Please be specific with your proposal, and keep your answer to 250 words or less.)
Under the United States Constitution, we have Separation of Powers between 3 co-equal branches of government.
The Constitution specifies what level of oversight authority each branch has over the other. The idea that a law can be passed to allow Congress or the Executive to have direct oversight over the Supreme Court is a fiction.
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned with a lack of enforceable Code of Ethics at the Supreme Court but that mission will not be furthered by present proposals.
Constitutionally, there ARE several things that can be done.
1) The primary constitutional oversight role of Congress over the Supreme Court involve Impeachment Powers. Impeachment Powers are near-plenary, and nothing is stopping Congress from passing a code of ethics, a violation of which would be a Misdemeanor under the Impeachment Clause. Congress can, and should, have a standing committee on impeachment investigations for oversight of BOTH the Executive and Judicial branches.
Additionally.
2) We must restore the concept of Constitutional Conventions, and we should have them every 10 years, either alongside the decennial census, or at the 5 year mark of the census.3) This would provide the ultimate check on SCOTUS decisions, as there would now be a constitutional mechanism for the political branches to overturn decisions by which they disapprove of, or to make structural changes that presently elected lawmakers would deem a threat to their personal power.
However, Constitutional oversight must be done by mechanisms specified in the Constitution.
Should there be an age limit imposed on presidential candidates? What about Congress or Senate? If so, what is that limit?
No. Although our gerentocracy is unfortunate, arbitrary age limits are not a sensible way of dealing with the issue. There is zero reason to discriminate against a candidate for office simply on the basis of age.
However, on a related issue of term limits, there is strong public support and strong public policy rationales for their implementation.
IMHO, the following term limits should be implemented:US House: 8 years (4 terms)US Senate: 18 years (3 terms)US President: (2 terms)SCOTUS: Each President should be able to appoint 1 Justice for each term they are in elected office and that term should last for 12 years. There is an inherent injustice in the fact that some Presidents may appoint 3 justices in their 4 year term and others may only get to appoint 1 (or none) over 8 years. This leads to gamesmanship that unnecessarily interjects political considerations into the judicial process.
However, as stated in previous questions, all changes of this nature need to be passed by constitutional amendment, as they involve the regulation and supervision of constitutional officers.
Would you support legislation that protects women’s access to in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments nationwide? Why or why not? (Please be specific in your answer, and limit your response to 200 words.)
I wholeheartedly support government funded IVF and fertility treatments. Our nation (as are many many others) is facing a potentially catastrophic drop in birth rates and this is a matter of existential importance to the long term survival of our Republic.
All parents who wish to have children should be maximally supported by their government in their desire to do so.
The Republican Party’s platform, following the summer convention, calls for the “largest deportation effort in American history.” Is this something you support? If so, what would such an effort look like? If not, how would you assuage concerns about border security? (Please be specific in your response, and keep it to 250 words or less.)
As a formerly practicing Immigration Attorney, I have personal experience with how FUBAR our present immigration system is.
To have an intelligent discussion about the topic, we must break the discussion down into two topics: 1) A secure border, defined as the US having sovereign control over exactly whom, and the total number, of non-citizens/residents that enter our country; and 2) what to do with the people who are already here.
Regarding 1, if the United States wishes to continue to offer government benefits in the form of healthcare and education, then there is an additional cost for every undocumented person who enters the county. It is a math problem. The US simply cannot afford to import every impoverished person in the world. The border must be sealed to the point where the US can approve every single person who enters.
Once the border is sealed, the complex question of what to do with the tens of millions of undocumented persons who are here must be addressed. It’s not as simple as “deport them all” as many are have not committed criminal violations and have deep familial ties. Further, the system is injust as many of those individuals cannot leave the country to visit dying parents or family members.
I propose a “Yellow Card” system where all individuals who entered prior to Jan 1, 2021, are given a Yellow Card, which, like in Soccer, is the first of two strikes. They would then be legal and granted a work permit, be able to purchase property, and fully engage in civil society. There would be no NEW pathway to citizenship.
If a yellow card holder commits any Misdemeanor crime involving human victims or property damage, they would be fast tracked through the courts (that would then have the backlogs cleared by the program) and be deported within 30 days.
Cost of living is high on the list of concerns among voters, particularly among younger people. What is one bipartisan proposal you have to alleviate concerns about high prices or cost of living? (Please be specific in your response, and limit it to 200 words.)
Cost of living is the #1 reason why an entire generation of young people believe that the American Dream is no longer within reach.
Inflation and Cost of Living are complex economic problems that have to be addressed across multiple domains:
1) Sane Foreign Policy: Having kinetic conflict in Eurasia (Ukraine) and the Middle East, increases the global price of energy… and the global price of all things that require energy.2) Regulatory Reform: Regulatory compliance is a “hidden tax” that increases the costs of goods and services, and in the domain of Home Construction, severely hampers the supply of homes available.3) Trillion $ budget deficits: if continue to spend gargantuan amounts of money that we are not raising in taxes, the value of the dollar that people earn will continue to lose value each year relative to the increase in the price of goods. We just recently crossed the point where out debt service payments have exceeded $1 trillion dollars. Trillion with a T. That is more than the entire Department of Defense budget. This is an existential risk to the nation and a direct contributor the rise in cost of living.
All must be addressed.
Californians continue to point to housing affordability as one of their top concerns. What is something the federal government could do to lessen the financial burden people feel, whether that’s with renting or buying a house? (Please be specific in your answer, and limit it to 200 words or less.)
There are many things the federal government can do to lower the cost of rent and housing.
1) Make rent payments and primary home mortgage payments fully tax deductible.2) Regulatory reform to incentivize the construction of additional units of housing and apartments.3) Provide low fixed interest home loans for first time home buyers.4) Eliminate capitals gains tax consequences for homeowners who wish to downsize after their children have grown and left the home.
Separately, but related, the Federal Government must act to limit the amount of total properties and units that can be owned by corporations such as Blackrock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, etc., who routinely engage in monopolistic practices and price fixing to artificially decrease the total supply of available units and drive up prices.
What do you see the federal government’s role as in helping local municipalities tackle homelessness? (Please be specific in your answer, and limit it to 200 words or less.)
Any sane discussion of homelessness needs to begin with an accurate description of the gravity of the problem: in 2024, in the United States of America, there are over 500,000 human beings who sleep on the street in horrific conditions, 150,000 of which are in California, with nearly 100,000 is Southern California alone.
Future generations will judge us for how we deal with, or fail to deal with, this problem.
The sheer scale of the problem requires a Federal Government response. If every one of the 435 Congressional districts were to bring online one 100 unit homeless rehabilitation shelter every 2 years, it would take 22 years to bring online enough units to deal with the present number of homeless individuals.
I say “homeless rehabilitation centers” as simply providing housing alone is not a solution. The vast majority of homeless individuals have mental health problems, or addiction issues, or both. All have in common that they have been disconnected from their family and support systems for a significant period of time.
Los Angeles’ present system of bringing on line 1000 units over 10 years countywide at an average cost of $1 million per unit will never address the scale of the problem.
However, privileged Americans have for years traveled to Europe to stay in hostels, which routinely can support 100 individuals living in a single multi story building with different levels of accommodation and access to community support. A cafeteria floor can provide food 24 hours a day, and that same floor can have offices for in-house psychiatric support and local church support.
The problem is solvable with creativity. Burning Man creates a city in the desert that supports 80,000 people. It is built in one week. They should be part of the solution.
Everyone who cares about social justice and the homeless can similarly get the training and certification to manage one of these facilities or to provide mental health services therein.
After Tesla chief executive Elon Musk shared an AI-generated video purporting to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ voice, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to enact legislation to make it illegal to manipulate someone’s voice in an ad. What is something the federal government could do to protect people from deep-fakes, or false AI-generated images, videos and audio? (Please be specific in your response, and keep your answer to 200 words or less.)
The Federal Government should not be in the business of content restrictions or censorship of any kind. The first amendment protects satirical behavior, and laws regarding Libel and Slander have existed for hundreds of years for those individuals whose use of speech causes actual or repetitional damage to individuals.
What is one local infrastructure project you would push to secure funds for in the federal budget? (Please be specific in your answer.)
Water, water, water. Our district is home to the Morris Dam which is of the utmost geopolitical significance to the people in our district who depend on it to have water for their families. It is a crucial piece of the Aqueduct and Dam infrastructure of the Great State of California that has been neglected over the past several decades and it is the only reason we have been able to support the doubling of the local population that has occurred in that same period of time.
We must massively increase our construction of water retention projects so we collect waters in years of plenty for use in years of drought.
What is one environment or climate policy you’d champion if elected? (Please be specific with your policy proposal, and keep your answer to 200 words or less.)
A discussion of protection of our environment should begin with an acknowledgement that all of the commodities we use are, on a macro level, pieces of the Earth/nature that have been ground up (destroyed) and reassembled in the form of commodities. When the commodity is no longer needed, the commodity is disposed of predominantly by placing it into a landfill, causing further environmental destruction.
The most environmentally destructive of these commodities are electronics, that have various levels of heavy metals are rare earth minerals that have differing levels of toxicity.
A National Right to Repair regimen that requires auto manufacturers and electronics manufacturers to sell individual replacement parts for the products that enter the stream of commerce used to be norm. It was routine for individuals to have their TV’s and appliances repaired instead of thrown into the trash. This is particularly relevant with computers, and phones, that often could be repaired with the replacement of a single transistor, but the manufacturer requires the purchase of an entire motherboard.
Similarly, the proliferation of plastics throughout the environment has reached catastrophic levels with micro plastics being discovered in EVERY human being, in their brain/genital tissue.
What’s the No. 1 song on your playlist while you’re on the campaign trail?
Happy to Be Here – Todd Snider, The Decline – NOFX
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