Shawn Casey O’Brien is the underdog among five Democrats vying for their party’s nomination in the 41st Assembly District primary’a position he understands. When O’Brien was in grade school and coping with cerebral palsy, bullies stole his crutches and stuffed him in a trash can. He climbed his way out and crawled up the hill to get his crutches. “I was a mess,” he says. “I don’t like bullies, but they’ve made me what I am’I stand up for the underdog.” The oldest of seven children, O’Brien was born into a union family in Pontiac, Michigan. His father worked for Fisher Body before going into the state legislature. “I was taught early to respect labor,” says O’Brien, who calls himself an FDR Democrat who believes social programs with their safety nets help save the country’s middle class. “If you have grandma taken care of with Social Security and your children can get low-interest loans for college, that leaves a middle class able to spend,” O’Brien says. “It isn’t an original idea; I got it from Henry Ford who figured out if he paid his workers enough, he made out because they could afford the cars.” O’Brien started his political career at age 19 when he hitched out to Santa Monica to work for Tom Hayden’s 1976 senate primary campaign against John Tunney. After the election he sang in a rock-and-roll band called “The Cripples.” One night he was in Santa Monica thumbing for a ride home, when a man in a blue station wagon picked him up. They struck up a conversation and when the man heard that O’Brien had a band, he asked O’Brien to sing him a song. The man driving the car was Bob Dylan, who was impressed enough to take one of O’Brien’s tapes to Management 3. The company wanted to manage him, but told him to change his punk image to a “John Denver on sticks” kind of persona, drawing on the fact that he uses crutches. O’Brien refused, and he and his band were blackballed for several years. “I was 23 and didn’t understand the opportunity I had,” O’Brien says. “I don’t think anyone ever said ‘No’ to that company.” He started writing and had almost finished his first novel, “Notes of a Political Roadie,” when someone broke into his house and stole his briefcase, which contained the manuscript. He didn’t have a copy (in that era before the computer), and had to resign himself to its loss. Twenty years later he finished another novel, “For the Love of Long Shots,” which is excerpted in “Voices From the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act,” published by Oxford Press. Along the way, O’Brien got married and had a daughter and then became a certified paralegal so that he could support his family. During that time, he came across a parking lot in Venice that had the handicapped parking area chained off. This triggered his activism to register disabled voters. Throughout the 1990s, he was executive director of the Unique People’s Voting Project, a grassroots effort that was able to register over 100,000 Californians. He was also a member of the California Secretary of State’s Taskforce on Touchscreen Voting and is currently on sabbatical from co-hosting KPFK’s “Access Unlimited,” the disabilities awareness show for people who are born “in the know” or those that arrive there accidentally. In 2002, O’Brien ran for Secretary of State and even though he spent less than $7,000, he received more than 81,000 votes, which was surprising, but helped him realize the value of “grassroots” politics. “I would outlaw fundraising while the legislature is in session,” he says. “It’s almost impossible for an average citizen of modest means to run against the millionaires.” “If I’m elected, neither I nor my staff will spend one moment of our time raising money for future campaigns,” O’Brien promises. “I will spend full time legislating.” He estimates that current legislators spend 40 to 50 percent of their time lining up support for future campaigns. He would also do away with term limits for two reasons: the people who pass the budget are no longer in office to be held responsible for legislation they’ve passed, and lobbyists are the only people with institutional memory. “We end up with totally inexperienced legislators who don’t know how to deal with internal politics.” O’Brien is quite clear about the transportation issue. “It’s not enough to say we need mass transit; it needs to be accessible and faster than traveling by car. If it takes 30 minutes to get to work in a car and 70 by mass transit, you’ll never get people out of their cars.” He also points out you can’t fix traffic problems in Santa Monica or Agoura unless you take a regional approach, because many people drive 30 or 40 miles to get to work. He supports a subway extension along Wilshire so that passengers could travel between downtown and the beach, dedicated bus lanes on the freeways, and expanding the car-pool diamond lanes by adding a second one to keep traffic flowing. O’Brien opposes passing bonds to pay for infrastructure. “I’m against borrowing because it taxes future generations which allows the governor and his wealthy friends to have lunch today.” But he’s in favor of having California join other states by charging a severance tax on oil extracted in California and using the money to help provide research and production incentives for alternative energy, alternative fuel vehicles and, energy-efficient technologies. “If corporate loop-holes could be closed, an additional $2 to $3 billion would be added to the treasury and help forestall additional borrowing. “I’m tired of the legislature balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, senior citizens, children and the disabled, while they give tax breaks to the most fortunate among us, which ultimately destroys the middle class,” O’Brien says.
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