Turbulent week for Rep. Elton Gallegly who will seek 11th term
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Published: March 17, 2006
It’s been a turbulent week for Rep. Elton Gallegly, who first announced on March 10 that he would not be seeking a 11th term of office due to health concerns.
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula Times
It’s been a turbulent week for Rep. Elton Gallegly, who first announced on March 10 that he would not be seeking a 11th term of office due to health concerns. Then he found that the law extending the filing period when an incumbent steps down is not applied to Congress and that his name could not be removed from the November ballot.
By Wednesday Rep. Gallegly was officially back in the race, his health concerns resolved and his own resolve to serve another term – his last, he announced – firmly in place.
Rep. Gallegly, the Grand Marshal of the 2005 Optimist Club Christmas Parade, is “100 percent good to go,” with the health concerns resolved said his Press Secretary Tom Pfeifer on Wednesday.
From Washington, D.C. Rep. Gallegly said in a telephone interview that personal appeals including from Pres. Bush, his responsibility to and affection for the 34th Congressional District as well as the resolved health issues have put him back wholeheartedly in the race.
“This has been a day I’ll remember for the rest of my life…I’m sorry Janice is not here today,” but his wife is in California working in his campaign office.
“The news from the doctor was a life-altering event and when you get a call from the president – first wanting to know ‘How’s your health?’ –to make a personal appeal for you to run and then having the entire California delegation make the same appeal, well it’s a very gratifying thing.”
The last four days have “been about the hardest in my life,” noted Rep. Gallegly, who unintentionally kicked off a firestorm of activity when he announced he was not running for reelection just hours before the filing deadline.
Rep. Gallegly said he had been hoping that the results of the medical tests would be received in time for an earlier decision on whether or not to run. Based on legal and an election official’s advice he believed that he could bow out of the race, his name could be removed from the ballot and the filing period would be extended five days.
When the news broke that he wasn’t going to run among those who rushed to the Ventura County Government Center were Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, who was told that since she has already filed to run again for the Assembly she could not switch offices. The same went for her husband Tony Strickland, who is running for a statewide office.
After exploring legal options, Rep. Gallegly said that it would be unfair to “close potential candidates out of the process” as well as to “reopen the process with no time left for anyone to launch a viable campaign.
He decided to “unilaterally reopen the process,” so that those who wish to seek his seat in 2008 will have two years “to gear up their campaigns. It will not be a five-day extension but a two-year extension and if they want to go ahead,” and start campaigning for the 2008 election Rep. Gallegly said he would not be offended.
For now Rep. Gallegly is relieved that there can be “more focus and less confusion and we can move ahead…I felt I had to be honest with my constituents,” about his health concerns and the impacts on his seeking an 11th term.
Although Rep. Gallegly said he would like to see more of his seven grandchildren, “I have the best of both worlds to be able to work in the nation’s Capitol and do what I’m doing and live in Ventura County…it doesn’t get any better than that. They say you can tell how blessed a man is by the number and caliber of his friends…I am very blessed.”
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