HUNTINGTON BEACH — Republican Assemblyman John R. Lewis said during a debate for his state Senate campaign Friday that California's welfare system is a "gravy train" that is so lucrative for its recipients that it attracts a migration of indigents from around the country.
Lewis, of Orange, the heavy favorite to win former Anaheim state Sen. John Seymour's seat in a special election May 14, added that the immigration of poor people to California is driving out state businesses.
"There is an influx of migration to get on the gravy train in California," Lewis said during the half-hour videotaped debate on KOCE-TV. ". . . The production sector is leaving the state and these people are moving to California."
Lewis, 36, was asked by the show's moderator if he was insensitive to the poor. "I don't think so," he said. ". . . Government can't be the big brother for everybody."
Lewis' Democratic opponent, Francis Hoffman, said he agreed that the state's welfare programs might be considered for cuts, but he said the assemblyman was "callous" to describe the system as a "gravy train."
Hoffman, 42, an attorney and member of the Orange County Board of Education, said he particularly disagreed with Lewis regarding indigent health care. "To describe medical care as a gravy train is outrageous," he said.
Hoffman suggested that Lewis, an heir to a dog food company fortune who is considered one of the Legislature's wealthiest members, probably wouldn't say the same thing if his family had needed public assistance.
"It shows he's never been in a situation in which someone--himself or his family--has needed a doctor to give him care" that they couldn't afford, Hoffman said.
Casey McKeever, attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Sacramento, said California actually ranks second in the nation, behind Alaska, for the value of its payments under the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program. He said the amount of the payment is largely determined by the state's expensive housing costs.
But McKeever denied there is a migration to California caused by the high payments. "That's utterly false," he said. "There is a migration to California generally, but the idea that AFDC has a special attraction is not supported by the evidence."
Lewis won the Republican nomination for Seymour's state Senate seat last March after a competitive primary that included eight Republicans and two other Assembly members--Doris Allen of Cypress and Nolan Frizzelle of Huntington Beach.
