Constituents in the House of Representatives’ 23rd District, which includes parts of San Luis Obispo County, re-elected Democrat Lois Capps Tuesday.
“I feel very gratified, first of all that there’s a good turn out at the polls,” Capps said.
Capps defeated Republican Victor Tognazzini with 63 percent of the vote. She will enter her third full term in Congress.
“I need to get out and start campaigning for next time,” Tognazzini said. “We need to work on getting the redistricting out of the hands of the legislature.”
Tognazzini claims the long and skinny 23rd District was gerrymandered to create a “safe district” for the incumbent.
Capps spent the rest of the night celebrating with and thanking her supporters.
“It looks like for the first time I’m going to serve in a majority and that’s very good,” Capps said. While the Democrats have a majority in the House, as of 11 p.m. Tuesday there was no clear majority in the Senate.
During a debate at Cal Poly last week she talked about her hope for a democratic majority in Congress, especially in light of the Republican budget for higher education.
“I think it’s outrageous that in a time when we all know how important higher education is for our country that this budget would actually lack outreach events, grant opportunities and make it twice as hard to get a student loan. The interest rates have increased,” Capps said at the debate. “And I’m going to continue to fight really hard to restore these cuts to secondary education. And I’m looking forward to serving in a Congress of new leadership so that we can do things like making college tuition permanently tax-deductible and other areas of critical importance to the furtherance of our public education system.”
Other issues of importance to Capps are Medicare, energy prices, the environment, immigration reform and ending the war in Iraq.
“I was particularly grateful to see the strong interest in politics, in voting…that I saw at Cal Poly. My hat’s off to the associated students,” Capps said.