Who is John Cox, Republican candidate in the California governor recall election?

Name: John Cox

Political party: Republican

Residence: Rancho Santa Fe

Occupation: Businessman/accountant/father

Education: University of Illinois, Chicago (BA) Illinois Institute of Technology (JD)

Experience: I was born with nothing and raised by a single mother. I worked my way through college, earned a CPA and a law degree. I built a successful business from nothing. I’m not like the career politicians and celebrities that have failed California. As an outsider, I don’t owe the insiders and special interests anything. Over 40 years in business, I’ve worked to fix problems and fashion solutions to deliver results. That’s what California needs; a problem solver that will make changes our state needs.

Website: https://johncox.com/

What precautions, if any, should California continue to take to cope with COVID-19 and its variants?

The most important thing we can do is encourage people to get the vaccine. It’s pretty simple, the vaccine works. Californians should get vaccinated and use common sense to manage their own individual risk. We should follow science but it is pretty clear that shutdowns and keeping our children out of school has not materially altered the risk quotient of this disease.

California provided cash support to individuals and small businesses during the pandemic. To what extent should that assistance continue?

California needs to stop putting bandaids on its problems. California’s problems go far beyond what happened during the COVID lockdowns. California’s taxes are too high – we need to reduce them by 25 percent across the board. The cost of housing is too high because the career politicians have succumbed to extremists who don’t want any new housing. They protest and appeal any effort to build new housing, dramatically increasing the cost of housing. We need to reform CEQA and streamline the permitting process. This will drive the cost of housing down dramatically. We also need to make sure California doesn’t shut down again. Closing California cost millions of people their jobs and caused thousands of businesses to close forever. We need to keep businesses open. That’s the best thing we can do for California families.

What more would you do to address California’s housing crisis?

As a CPA I recognize a simple math problem when I see one. California doesn’t have enough housing, and its politics drive up the cost of building with delays, regulations, lawsuits and mandates. We need to add additional housing but we also have to bring down the cost of building. We need to reform the zoning regulations that limit supply and drive up costs and prices. We need to expedite the housing permit process and reduce fees. And we need to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act, which is abused by anti-development groups to delay the construction of new housing units for years. They are only hurting the poor and the middle class.

What should California do to build up its middle class?

It starts with a government that looks out for the middle class. For too long, our government has been run by career politicians and insiders who only look out for themselves. The result is the highest taxes in the country, out-of-control homelessness, businesses closing, and unaffordable housing. The career politicians and insiders had years to fix these problems, but they’ve only gotten worse. As a small businessman and CPA, I’ll bring real change to California. We’ll slash taxes, cut down on homelessness, and lower the cost of housing. We’ll also vastly improve our education system by getting the politicians out of it and give parents control with education savings accounts, more competition in education, and charter schools. We also need licensing and regulatory reform, eliminating the roadblocks to start a business, which is the best way to climb the economic ladder. As a result, the middle class will boom.

Would you propose any new policies to address climate change?

California has done quite a bit already and our people pay for it with some of the highest gasoline, electricity and general cost of living in the country. Global pollution is a huge problem, but China is now producing as much as the rest of the world combined. We need to get them to replace coal with cleaner burning fuels like natural gas. We would do a lot more for global pollution by developing LNG facilities, lowering the cost of natural gas and competing with dirty coal. California has significant reserves of gas, and we must do a better job managing our natural resources. We also must do something about the wildfires that burn out of control and dump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

What should California do in the long term to address wildfire and drought conditions?

We must do something about the wildfires that burn out of control and dump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. We face constant droughts and wildfires because our government isn’t doing all it can to manage our environment. We need to maintain our forests better to reduce the severity of wildfires and use an air armada to fight the wildfires when they do happen. We can rebuild the timber industry, which manages the forests at no cost to the taxpayers.

For drought, we know that California has always had drought conditions that come and go. That’s why the California Water Project was such an important infrastructure miracle. We need to expand desalination; Israel EXPORTS water thanks to its desalination facilities. We can do the same thing here on a larger scale. The only reason it hasn’t happened is that the politicians have failed to make it happen. We should also build more reservoirs and more recycling of water.

This story was originally published August 12, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Who is John Cox, Republican candidate in the California governor recall election?."