Dr. Adriana Van Hemert, a Republican running in the 41st Assembly District primary, thinks she has at least a “50-percent chance” of winning against the only other Republican in this race, Tony Dolz. “My opponent is only interested in one issue’illegal immigration,” said Van Hemert, who lives in Santa Monica. “While it affects us all, it’s really a federal issue. There are a lot of other issues in this campaign. We’ll see what the voters have to say June 6. ” Van Hemert believes in fewer government regulations and that the government should be “a facilitator, not a regulator” in the private sector. While she has no children of her own, she is “pro family” and “pro child.” As a social worker, she has seen the system at its worst, having worked with abused children and low-income families in crime-ridden areas of L.A. She said she is running for the Assembly “to ensure that all children within the State of California have the opportunity for a better future. The education system in this state is broken and needs to be fixed. Parents need choices and to be involved. We need more charter schools.” For the past 10 years, Van Hemert has done pro-bono work with the homeless and mentally ill, the elderly and people with addictions. She has also worked with minorities and the Latino population, counseling children in the Compton schools, as well as in their homes. Having visited dozens of L.A. schools, she is concerned with what she sees as an “obvious decline of our educational system. I have worked with seniors in high school who could barely read or write at a third grade level.” While Van Hemert believes in quality education, she also sees the need for an alternative to high school, “a trade school where our children would be afforded the opportunity to learn employable trades, with an apprentice program in which local businesses participate. Every child is capable of excelling at something, given the chance.” Van Hemert was born in the Netherlands, emigrated to the U.S. in 1968, settled in the Salinas Valley and, after the untimely death of her husband two years later in a traffic accident, decided to relocate to Southern California, where she had a number of careers (acting, real estate, business entrepreneur) before becoming a social worker. She holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and a master’s degree in human development with an emphasis on marriage and family therapy. She also trained at UCLA in family mediation and alcohol and drug counseling. In this last week of the primary campaign she said she is going to be precinct walking and cold-calling, looking to conjure up last-minute support. Asked how fundraising for her campaign was going, Van Hemert, 59, told the Palisadian-Post on Tuesday that “it’s going as well as can be expected. I think big money is waiting until after the primary.” Van Hemert, who became a U.S. citizen in 1975, said that since she arrived here 38 years ago, she has seen the “American dream” erode and now elude many citizens, especially in California “due to rampant government spending and wasting taxpayers’ money on programs that don’t work. We need to bring back integrity and accountability to Sacramento,” she said. “I am neither a lawyer nor a career politician. I am a private citizen who understands the concerns of voters.”
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