The Enterprise had the chance to sit down for an interview with Congressional District 5 candidate Mike Barkley. Barkley, 76, is a Progressive Democrat looking to unseat Republican Tom McClintock in the June 7 elections.
The Enterprise asked Barkley about some of the challenges of being the only Democrat in the race. He responded, “It’s [District 5] not as conservative as you might think. The first thing I did was get a copy of the voter files from each of the eight counties. I find Republicans, American Independents, and anything that says conservative to be 48.09% of the registered voters in the district. And the “non-Republicanish,” which includes no party preference comes out to 51.8%. Knocking on doors, I visit Democrats, Independents, Green, Peace and Freedom, and some of the others.”
Ballotpedia as well as Barkley’s official website states, “Barkley graduated from Del Valle High School in 1963. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1964 to 1967. Barkley earned a J.D. from Armstrong College Law School in 1980. Barkley’s career experience includes working as an accounting manager at Sierra Pacific Insurance, a programmer-analyst at Insurnet and Pacific Bell, and an author.”
When asked what he would like to see changed in District 5, Barkley said, “It would have helped if the ‘we draw the lines’ people had done their job last summer, instead of waiting till December 27. With Republicans, when they make up their mind they just write a check. With the Democrats, you need months and months of planning just to have enough cash around to file the candidate statements on the filing day.
“But since I’ve done this before, I knew it was coming. So I was ready. Unfortunately, my favorite way of campaigning is door to door. And in past campaigns, I’ve spent a year up until the primary knocking on doors, so I can get a substantial number of doors, which makes a significant difference. But this year I lost that opportunity because of the maps coming in so late. And then it took me 55 days to get some of those voter files, which are my source for walking lists. So I lost a lot of time there,” continued Barkley.
Barkley stated that the issue he is looking to work on the most as well as the most difficult is water.
On the topic of drought, Barkley stated, “I’m not specifically aware of how the local districts are being affected, but I am listening statewide. I have a plan on my website, taken from federal and state reports, that adds 43 million acre-feet of additional storage. And that’s what we would need in order to counteract the effects of the floods of 1862. The opposite side of not enough water saved up is the tendency that California has to have massive floods. The flood of 1862 killed thousands of people, killed 800,000 head of livestock, it washed out almost every bridge and ferry in the state. It was the least of seven such floods we’ve had in the last 1,800 years.”
He continued, “We need to save that water, and we need to save it someplace safe. We could do that, and we have a market for some of it. The six southeastern states would buy a lot of that, as well as Mexico. But at the moment, California is taking a larger share of the Colorado River than it should be. So with developing this complex of additional reservoirs, we would need also three other conveyance systems which would keep the water out of the Delta and not mess with that problem or add colder water for salmon.”
On the topic of housing, Barkley said, “The Tax Reform Act of 1986 got rid of the more powerful depreciation, the higher percentage, and the longer and the shorter allowance times. It enhanced the alternative minimum tax. So the commercial and residential rental business fell off a cliff. And a couple of years later, the savings and loan crisis happened, and as a result, we lost some of our lenders.”
He continued, “In Texas, they were bulldozing 200-plus apartment complexes because there’s no more market for them without the tax shelter benefits. So that happened with the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1998, they passed the Faircloth amendment which put a ceiling on the number of subsidized units in the country, or in any location that could be developed. You can still develop those units, but you had to tear down others in order to compensate. But that wasn’t the big problem. For a while there they were just flat-cutting the funds for subsidized housing. In 2008 we had subprime loans and housing flippers.
“We had the housing crisis, which was primarily based on Wall Street’s interaction with the subprime loans and with housing flippers. All of a sudden, subprime loans were forbidden through various regulatory or similar proceedings. So those low-income loans just flat stopped. So we’re missing about 30 years of commercial rental property development, missing 20 years of subsidized housing, and we’re missing about 10 years of subprime loans, although they’ve recently come back a bit,” said Barkley.
“Congress did this to the country, Congress needs to fix it. You can handle the commercial rental property deficits by doing assessments of individual communities, figuring out the deficits, and the deficiencies in housing, and then assigning buy lottery opportunities to re-employ the tax shelter provisions that disappeared in 1986.
“That will make a big difference in getting housing restarted. You can get rid of the Faircloth amendment and start subsidizing low-income housing. That would make a big difference in the amount of housing available to low-income people. You can add a subprime loan division to HUD or FHA, which will subsidize riskier loans and let all those people who are otherwise unable to afford to buy houses, at least make it make the effort. Now, we would lose some of those because the problems don’t go away even if they get along. But the only thing that Congress didn’t touch was tents and sleeping bags,” explained Barkley.
When asked about infrastructure, Barkley said, “I’m aware of all the funding, I’m just not aware of what they’re actually doing, because I’m not seeing it. I think they need to get off the stump and get out there and get that work done.”
He continued, “There is one infrastructure problem that really bothers me. When they built New Melones, they built bypass capacity that will be through the dam or spilling at 40% of what I believe the flow was in January 1862 with the great California floods. It’s a full dam, and I believe that if twice in January 1862 with the flows that we had, then It would have overtopped that dam twice, which would have produced a disaster about 100 times worse than the Johnstown flood. And since I’m downstream from it, I don’t like that.”
On the topic of healthcare, Barkely was short and to the point, “Any bill that comes across my desk that improves health care for everybody, I would vote for. Of course, I would rather see Medicare for all without deductibles. I like the provisions in Taiwan, where you get a card, go to any provider you want, and you’re taken care of. We should have that in this country.”
“First, you need to collect a list of things; projects, or subsidies that you need and then go after them. I have plenty of things on my website that I can horsetrade. And I believe I can get a lot of stuff for District 5 by horsetrading with that stuff,” said Barkley when asked about his plans for dealing with the federal government.
When it comes to fire season, Barkley said, “I own, with my brother, a ranch 40 miles from Chico out in the hills. We had to evacuate the ranch because of the August Complex Fire 18 months ago. Fortunately for us, the wind turned and went the other direction. I’ve looked at the caucuses in Congress, and there’s one thing that I think is missing that it needs. We need a natural disaster caucus for wildfires, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes.”
He continued, “It’s a natural disaster and casualty insurance caucus because the insurance is not adequate. We need to add to that liability insurance so the public can get it. We need a reinsurance program similar to an improved version of FEMA’s flood insurance only bigger, better, and faster. We need to be able to lay off commercial insurers. Federal firefighters need to get paid a decent wage, they need to get paid at least as much as the California firefighters do. We need a program to improve the maintenance of forestry roads and fire roads. If there is a problem with slash in the fire-prone areas we need to clean that up.”
Regarding climate change, Barkley said, “That’s a tough one because they’ve talked about reducing carbon dioxide by 2050, they really need to do that by 2030. As I see it, the way the ice caps are melting, our future is an inland lake that runs from Lemoore to Red Bluff. And that affects parts of this district, Stanislaus mostly. But it also affects everybody because it’s food, you can’t do much farming underwater.
“If we don’t fix the global warming and the ice cap melting, we’re going to need a dike or more structures at Golden Gate in order to keep the Central Valley productive. Otherwise, Sacramento and Stockton will be gone- and where I’m sitting will be under about 102-120 feet of water.”
On the topic of public transportation, Barkley stated, “Nationwide, we have subsidized Amtrak, but we missed the one that was really useful to poor people, and that’s Greyhound. We need to partner with Greyhound and reestablish their network which has stopped serving most of the small towns because that’s where the poor people ride and they need that service.”
“Manteca is 85,000 people, and we do not have Greyhound service, and that’s silly. I can buy a car, but there are a lot of people who can’t. We need to do with Greyhound what has been attempted with the Amtrak, and we should do that now.”
Small businesses and corporations
When it came to small businesses competing with large corporations, Barkley stated, “We have the Small Business Administration, of course, we could add to that program a loan forgiveness mechanism if we wanted to, in order to keep small missus going, especially under situations like the COVID epidemic.”
“They could examine those loans and forgive the ones that would keep the businesses going. Outside of Covid on a regular basis, they could again, subsidize small businesses, depending on some criteria that would need to be developed.”
“I would like to see community colleges be free. I would like to see the cuts that were made 10 years ago in education funding restored. I would like to see more cooperation with the teachers on getting the funding needed in their schools rather than just blowing them off,” said Barkley on education.
When it came to police reform Barkley said, “That’s a tricky one because if there’s something out there as obvious, it would have already been done. In the case of police shootings of unarmed persons, I favor a provision that requires that any officer that shoots and kills an unarmed person will be thereafter forever barred from holding any job that requires possession or use of a firearm.”
“As it is now, these shootings, it’s like on the spur of the moment, the thought about it needs to go all the way back to the police academy. ‘From this moment on, understand that if you shoot somebody and they’re not armed, that’s a career-ending act.’ I think that would help solve a lot of the anger and the mistaken shootings.”
“They’ve already relaxed the imprisonment, but some of that has backfired. There’s been an increase in theft and that kind of stuff, especially shoplifting. My own feeling is that if we solve the housing problem, a lot of that will go away,” said Barkley on the topic of drugs.
Regarding mental health, Barkley said, “The first thing I need to do is to listen, which is the case with every issue. And other than that, if the existing professionals are handling it correctly, they should know what they need to do. They probably need funding.”
“Mostly, I’m getting a smattering of small donations, but I’ve got money of my own. Which I’ve been dumping into the campaign. So most of what I’ve been spending has been my own,” said Barkley when it came to his campaign contributions.
