FRESNO AND TULARE COUNTY – On the ballot this November includes candidates for the California State Assembly, which elects new members every two years.Â
In State Assembly District 33, Republicans Xavier Avila and Alexandra Macedo are running against each other to see who will replace current Assemblymember Devon Mathis, who is retiring at the end of this term. State Assembly District 33 serves residents in Fresno, Tulare and Kings counties and spans across many cities, including Reedley, Kingsburg, Dinuba, Hanford, Tulare and Porterville.Â
California voters can use the Secretary of State’s online voter registration tool at registertovote.ca.gov to register to vote or check their status. Voters in Fresno County and Tulare County can use an online district lookup tool through their respective county elections office to enter their address and find what Congressional, state, county and city districts they live in.
Avila and Macedo were the top two vote-getters in the March primary, with Macedo receiving 44.1% of the vote and Avila receiving 23.5% of the vote among five total candidates.Â
Avila spoke with Mineral King Publishing about his background and his goals for the upcoming Assembly term if he is elected Nov. 5. Interview responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Alexandra Macedo (R)*
Xavier Avila (R)*
Ruben Macareno (D)
Angel Ruiz (D)
Hipolito Cerros (D)
Q: What is your background?Â
AVILA: I’m from an ag background. Both sides of my family are dairymen and farmers. Born in Kings County, but grew up on a farm in Tulare County, and so from a big family and started my own dairy in 1992. Got into business for myself in agriculture. Started as a dairy farmer, and, a lot of your dairy organizations where you ship your milk to are farmer-owned co-ops, right? So that started my experience in farm policy. I did a lot of fly-ins to Washington, D.C., and trips to Sacramento on farm policy; did that for years. Ended up on the corporate board of Land O’Lakes for nine years, and we worked on a lot of policy, too — farm bill, regulations, farm commodity prices, things like that. Also, I’m married with seven children and have been married for 30 years.Q: What do you hope to change or accomplish in the next two years, if elected?Â
AVILA: Overall, to improve the overall economy and living conditions for the citizens of the state. Cost of living shot up, cost of housing has really shot up to the point where young couples aren’t having any kids because it’s expensive.Â
A big issue here is water restrictions, and I think we’ve mismanaged our water supply, and it’s going to hurt the Valley. They’re talking about fallowing a lot of farm ground here in the Valley, and that’s going to hurt the local economy. It’s going to mean less jobs, it’s going to mean less of a tax base for your local municipalities and counties.Â
Health care is another issue. Hospitals in the Valley are losing millions of dollars a year. Their costs have gone up and they don’t have enough income to pay for the high costs that they’re incurring. I’ve served on the Tulare Local Healthcare (District) board for seven years, and when I got on, the Tulare hospital was in trouble. We had to close it for a year, and I saw the impact of what a closed hospital means to a community. … I’m really worried about access to healthcare.Â
If a hospital closes down because it can’t pay its bills, that affects a lot of people. … I also serve on Adventist Health’s Community Board that covers eight hospitals: Reedley, Selma, Hanford, Tulare, Delano, two in Bakersfield and one in Tehachapi, plus over 100 and some clinics. So I’m aware of a lot of the issues that are happening with health care and the economic stress that hospitals are facing here in the Valley; it’s a big reason why I’m running for State Assembly.
Q: Who is supporting and endorsing your campaign, and who are the major funders of your campaign?Â
AVILA: Endorsing my campaign is former Assemblywoman Nicole Parra. Four of your Kings County Board of Supervisors — Joe Neves, Richard Fagundes, Rusty Robinson, Doug Verboon. A majority of the Hanford City Council, the entire Farmersville City Council, and I got two endorsements from the Lindsay City Council. Who’s funding my campaign, mostly individuals, mostly some dairy farmers and just small donations from individuals.
Q: Your district includes many small cities and unincorporated communities that are often overlooked by the state government. How will you represent them and advocate for their needs?
AVILA: That is a great question, and that’s another thing that I talk about on my social media. So I’m doing a social media kind of series where I go to all those little towns in the district and just do a video about them, highlight a few things. The reason why I’m doing that is to show that I haven’t forgotten them. … I’m from a little town outside of a little town called Tipton in Tulare County. It’s unincorporated. And I live between Tipton and Pixley, another unincorporated town. So I know all these little towns.Â
All these little unincorporated towns I think get the short end of the stick. There’s no donors from these towns, right? So politicians tend to just ignore them and go where the money’s at. And I don’t think you can represent the district of 500,000 people when a huge majority of its citizens are from these smaller unincorporated towns and in the areas that are the most economically hit in the state. So I would be a voice for them.Â
Some of these places are actually good places to live, and I actually visit a lot of people there, and you know, they never hear from people running for political office. So people in political office tend to go where the money’s at and spend their time where the money’s at, but being from a small unincorporated town, I understand the problems they have. Clean drinking water, jobs, affordable housing. I see families that have multiple families living in one house because they’ve got to pool their income together to afford to live somewhere.
Q: The high cost of living is a major concern for Californians. What will you do in the state legislature to help make household expenses, like electricity and groceries, more affordable?Â
AVILA: There’s a couple things there. One, is the federal government plays a huge role in cost of living as well. So in the state legislature, we wouldn’t have too much control over that, but there is a lot that the state itself could do, and California has a lot of overregulation. I’m not bashing regulation. I think the proper amount of regulation is good. We need regulation, but what’s happening is it’s so expensive to do business in California that these regulations add extra costs on top of things that probably aren’t necessary.Â
Take a look at the energy policy, where we’re trying to do more green energy. A certain amount of green energy is good, I think, but the problem is, the whole system’s not in. Solar panels don’t work at night, right? So what do you do at night? You got to fire up a bunch of gas generators to burn that, and then you got to shut them off when the sun comes up. So it’s this big inefficient thing, which leaves us with a big shortage of power at the wrong times. … And from what I’m hearing now, people’s electric bill has gone up so high. To me, that’s all solvable. We have other means to produce affordable energy, and we’re not taking advantage of that.Â
As far as food goes, the Central Valley is the fruit basket of the world, one of the highest productive areas in the world. There’s food right here, and a lot of your increase in costs of living is through inflation — although it’s coming down now — those are a lot of supply chain issues, and that’s probably more on the federal side. It has to do with spending. But as far as the state goes, there’s not a lot that can be done as far as food prices go, because we’re on a world market with food prices, right? But I would think a state legislature that has a relationship with the federal government would work with them to ease that.Â
We are living in the day and age where there’s a lack of competition. … That usually tends to lead to higher prices as well. It’s a really complicated issue that I’m talking about. Take meat prices. … There’s just a few (companies) that control most of the meat, right? So you end up in these situations where food is, I would say, artificially higher based on a lack of competition. … That’s regulated by the federal government and the Department of Justice.Â
As more of the market is controlled by fewer people, you’re going to end up in situations where some things are high. … What you’re hearing is the work I’ve done for years in farm policy. I was in Washington, D.C. on 9/11, and there’s been several attempts to kind of correct what’s going on here. … Those things, I call it corruption, where a lot of your big donors are contributing to politicians whose job it is to regulate that consolidation, make sure there’s enough competition in the market to keep everything even. I’m not saying that happens with every commodity, but that’s just one particular example.
