THE VOICE OF MODESTO

Three contenders have entered the rostrum vying for the fourth Stanislaus County Supervisorial District. They are: Incumbent, Dick Monteith(REP), Former Modesto Mayor, Carmen Sabatino (DEM), and Balvino Irizarry (DEM)

Irizarry held a fundraiser on Wednesday, April 14^th 2010. A Twenty-five dollar minimum contribution at the door, and there were approximately fifty people in attendance at the event

As one would suspect, considering Irizarry’s continuous involvement in local Latino organizations, most notably, the Hispanic Leadership Council (HLC), familiar names, such as Armando Flores, Solange Altman and many others convened to show their support for Irizarry’s campaign for a seat on the Stanislaus Board of Supervisors

And that is why it was so surprising that in the mix of this primarily Democratic class of community leadership, there stood out some other names. Representatives of the Republican guard, most namely – Tom Van Groningen and Glen Wild of the Modesto Irrigation District (MID) Board of Directors.  The question is, should Irizarry make the November run-off election will these Republicans continue to give him money?

Armando Flores made an introduction speech, in which he emphatically praised the current Stanislaus Board of Supervisors, insisting that Irizarry would bring the necessary “diversification”.

Irizarry took the microphone and chronicled his sixty-plus year life history, beginning with his beginnings after emigrating from Puerto Rico, working in the fields, and walking through the Modesto Airport District as a school boy. He was quick to differentiate himself from “every other politician”, in that every politician says that the answer to this current down economy is jobs. The difference though, according to Irizarry, is that he has a plan on “how to provide these jobs.”

 And his plan was simply this: To look back at plans that have worked before and re-institute those. He failed to elaborate on what any of these plans of previous times were.