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| Photo by Joe McGarity |
The Fantom
Penguin begins a new ongoing series today, introducing the community to people
in important leadership positions. This
publication, as a matter of policy, does not endorse any candidate, but rather
offers them an opportunity to share their stories in their own words. This week:
Les Baugh, Shasta County Supervisor District 5.
“District 5
covers a small slice of Redding, goes down through Churn Creek Bottom, includes
that entire area, all of the City of Anderson (not the zip code), all of Cottonwood. It also includes, as we’re going to the east,
Millville, Shingletown, Manton and Viola.”
“I had moved
into Anderson. I was a teenager. I was managing a store for a man who had just
bought an asset in the City of Anderson.
He wanted me to enlarge the building by about 25%. So I had hired an architect on his behalf, an
engineer, had all the plans developed, presented them to the City of Anderson
and much like the stories people tell me when they come to the County of
Shasta, I felt a very similar thing. That
I felt like . . . Honestly, I felt like
I was going to have to pay somebody to get the approval I wanted. And this is back in the early 80’s, so you
have to kind of put it in perspective.
Pretty soon . . . and I became a little bit more aggressive with that
thought process, as I was sharing it very publicly with the community, that I
wasn’t happy at all. It seemed like it
was dragging on forever and we were never going to get anywhere with the City
of Anderson. This man came up to me; his
name was Jerry Voorhees and I believe he was mayor of the City of Anderson at
the time and I remember him saying, he said, ‘Baugh, you have a really big
mouth.’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir, I do.’ So, you have to picture Les Baugh in his
twenties not in his fifties as I am today.
And I said, ‘So, your point is?’
And he says, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you have been talking about the City of
Anderson and our Building Department and you’ve been saying some fairly
negative things.’ And I said, ‘Yes,
sir. I believe them with all my
heart.’ And he says, ‘Well, how would
you like to, instead of just complaining about the city, how would you like to
change that and participate in it and have the opportunity to make a
difference?’ And I said, ‘Well, what do
you have in mind?’ And he told me that
he had a Planning Commission appointment available and he asked if I would
accept appointment to the Anderson Planning Commission. He told me a little bit more about it and I
said, ‘Absolutely.’ And over the period
of the time from that appointment I was able to, I would say, effect some
change from the inside. It started
there. I think it led to a real passion,
a discovery that I had an ability to communicate, to be able to represent other
people, to make some positive changes.
Today Anderson is known as one of the friendliest entities for doing
business, where I remember as when I was mayor of Anderson, we would embrace
and say, ‘Come on in and we’ll help you discover how you can do business well
here in the City of Anderson.’ I’d like
to think I had a little part of that that started as a kid invited to sit on a
planning commission.”
“Well soon
after that, one of the men stepped down from the Anderson City Council, so
there was a vacancy and I had worked fairly effectively on the Planning
Commission, admittedly for a very short time.
They made a temporary appointment and placed me on -- I accepted the
appointment to the Anderson City Council then.
And then I had the opportunity to run for office to confirm that
position. So my first public election
was in 1982.”
The Fantom
Penguin asked the Supervisor how the impending retirement of Congressman Wally
Herger would affect Northstate politics.
“It doesn’t
affect my position at all. But certainly,
Congressman Herger announced his retirement and as planned in advance, he
endorsed Doug LaMalfa. Doug LaMalfa
intends, has already declared his public intent to run for Congress to replace
Congressman Herger. On the basis that a
lot of people believe that he will be successful (and I’m not telling you
that’s my personal opinion; I’m just telling you that is the common thought),
then there are those that are already making advance decisions to run for the
senate seat that he would vacate. Now
Senator LaMalfa is currently senator for Shasta County and we’re sitting in the
middle of Shasta County. But
redistricting has created a new District 1 that includes Shasta County and
Siskiyou County and it goes from Modoc County all along the eastern border of
California down to Alpine County. So you
take all of the counties in between; you’ve got a dozen counties that are the
new District 1. That’s the senate seat
I’m running for. Now the overlap is I’m
not running against Senator LaMalfa.”
The Fantom
Penguin then asked him about his opponent in this race.
“Well, I’ll
tell you my standard line is: I try
never to mention another person’s name than my own. And I’ll tell you that I really, honestly
from a personal perspective, have never run against anyone. I run for the job. I run for the people that I’ll
represent. It’s a different
perspective. It comes from my heart of
representing people not in a competitive race for a job.”
The Fantom
Penguin has extended an invitation to Baugh’s opponent to appear in this
publication.
