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‘Cat’ Sargent stresses more accountability in Sacramento in 63rd Assembly campaign

Assembly Candidate Cathrin "Cat" Sargent

California State Assembly candidate Cathrin "Cat" Sargent stresses independent, grassroots efforts.

By Brian Hews

For Cathrine “Cat” Sargent, this is her first foray into elected politics, and for the Lakewood resident, she is starting at an office that she says “can really make a difference in people’s lives.”

Sargent is running for the newly created 63rd Assembly District that includes Hawaiian Gardens, Lakewood and stretches northwest into the communities of Bell and East Los Angeles.

Sargent is married and has three children and says that “in action is tantamount to standing back and not doing anything” about the many current problems facing Californians.  Having spent most of her adult life in the private labor force, Sargent said it is “unacceptable” for “so many teachers to be given pink slips” and called education funding her top priority if she is elected to serve in the Assembly.

“The quality of education keeps going down, and our taxes keep going up, and I can’t sit on the sidelines any longer and expect that someone else is going to fix our problems,” Sargent told Los Cerritos Community Newspaper Group.

She said that she isn’t going “to spend a lot of money” on her campaign, but that she will be reaching out to voters via social media sites.  Sargent has started a Facebook, Twitter and other social outlet sites and called the cost of campaigning for public office “outrageous.”

“It is almost a slap in the face to the community that so much money is being spent on campaigns for state assembly,” Sargent said.  “There are so many people suffering right now,” she said, and called job creation the number one issue facing the 63rd Assembly District.

“We have a 17 and 18 percent unemployment rate in many of our cities here in this district, and even those numbers are not accurate since so many people are working under the table and doing anything and everything so they can put food on the table,” she said.

“People are falling out of the system, and Sacramento isn’t doing enough for the average worker,” she said.

Regarding the new California Open Primary System she tends to “favor” the new campaign structure.  “We try to put too much into Democrat, Republican, and Green Party politics instead of just voting for the best person.”  She said that she was a lifelong Republican, but changed her party affiliation to Democrat last December.  “I knew I wouldn’t run under the Republican ticket, but could just as easy consider myself to be a true Independent,” she said.

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