It seems as if anyone with a valid voter registration card within Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s 48th Congressional District is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2018 race, but for weeks The Mouth That Rohrabachered only had one announced challenger from his own Republican Party.
However, last week, Paul Martin officially tossed his hat into the ring, as fellow Republican Stelian Onufrei had done in July.
“I’m a lifelong Republican,” says Martin in his announcement. “District 48 deserves more than 15-term congressman, Dana Rohrabacher. Republicans can do better. And when Congress’ approval rating is 16 percent, the country could do better.”
Martin says he grew up on a five-acre ranch in Anaheim Hills, where he learned hard work from his farmer parents, went on to earn BA and MA degrees in philosophical ethics from UCLA and Biola University respectively, began a career in a commercial real estate, later lived in London as a music publishing executive and eventually founded Soul Survivor USA, which “inspires thousands of young people, many being at-risk teens, to live lives of integrity and service.”
He also writes a blog called “Paulosophia,” where his “About Me” reads: “Writer. Activist. Founder, Christian Muslim Alliance. Father of three. Politics junkie. Raging centrist. Chess geek. INTP. Mediterranean cook. Beer and Hymns bassist. UCLA. Philosophy.”
On Oct. 5, before Martin announced his bid for Congress, he wrote about the 48th District seat’s current occupant under the headline “I Guess Abortion Is Murder, Unless Your Mistress Is Pregnant:”
I think the biggest problem is these career politicians, like Depraved Dana Rohrabacher, who recently said about Charlottesville, “It’s all baloney.” (Tell that to the family of Heather Heyer, Dana.)
With seven Democrats trying to flip the 48th blue, Martin concedes in his campaign announcement that right now “the two front-runners are a career establishment Republican versus a billionaire Democrat.” I’m not sure which wealthy Democratic challenger that latter refers to, Hans Keirstead or Harley Rouda, but I do know that Martin is casting himself as “a leader who can relate with the middle class.”
Speaking of casting, keep in mind that Rohrabacher’s wife Rhonda got busted criminally years ago for a scheme that relied on a third candidate to split the vote in her candidate’s favor.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.