George Whitesides for Congress
George Whitesides is running for Congress in California’s 27th Congressional District. This very large district is to the north of Los Angeles. It includes the cities of Santa Clarita, Lancaster, and Palmdale.
Here’s a map from Wikipedia.
(By Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134877899)
The Cook Partisan Voting Index ranks the district as D+4, i.e., a swing district by leaning Democratic. Biden won the district in 2020 by 12.5 points. Yet Democrats have not won this district since 2018. Even though the district is overwhelmingly pro-choice, the current Republican representative voted to restrict access to Mifepristone, the morning-after pill. So this district is definitely winnable by the Democrats.
George Whitesides has spent most of his career in the Aerospace industry, including high level positions in NASA and private Aerospace-related companies. Since the district includes Edwards Air Force Bases, he is an excellent fit. He’s the type of guy who would be referred to in the industry as a straight-shooter. He’s honest, intelligent, and straight-forward.
Whitesides is also very active in the community. During the pandemic he pulled together an ad hoc group that did a lot of good work for local hospitals, including inventing a way to isolate people sick with COVID from the staff. (You can hear about this at 15:00 in the video below.)
As someone who has spent much of his career running public and private organizations, Whitesides is very tuned in to the local economy and how to help it grow. He speaks very positively about entrepreneurs and the explosion of new small-businesses both in his district and in the country as a whole. He sees this as a sign of optimism about the future.
You can see a 20 minute interview with Whitesides in the June 7 version of the Hopium chronicles.
I’m very impressed with Simon Rosenberg, who started and runs the Hopium chronicles. Whitesides is one of the small number of Congressional candidates on whom Simon is focussed. I think he is a great pick and will make a wonderful member of the House of Representatives.