2022 Elections

Can This Candidate Turn CA30 Progressive?

Shervin Aazami seeks to replace long term Congressman Brad Sherman with a platform that is solidly to the left of the corporate Democrat.

“Our education system requires significant structural reform, and that includes addressing decades of chronic underfunding of education needs for students with learning disabilities.”

- Shervin Aazami

My first public interaction with my Congressman was at one of his town halls about seven years ago. Fresh off my fight to get my two daughters the services that they needed from the LAUSD, I asked Brad Sherman how more teeth could be put into the law that requires school districts to provide free and appropriate public education (FAPE) to children with disabilities. He responded that no one from the disability community had ever told him that the law needed more teeth and that parents could always hire a lawyer if they did not think that the district was in compliance. He also correctly noted the federal government had severely underfunded special education services and said that he had fought to fix this problem. He did not specify what steps he had taken or why he had been unsuccessful.

The next time Sherman and I spoke was at his booth at the Woodland Hills Concerts in the park. I introduced myself as a candidate in the LAUSD School Board race and he asked who the incumbent was. When I told him that it was Tamar Galatzan his only response was that she has always supported him. It was a strangely honest answer; he did not care what Galatzan’s positions were, only that she could help him stay in office.

At one of the last town halls that I attended, Sherman sounded more like a Republican than the progressive Democrat he claims to be. The Congressman is a well-known foreign relations hawk, so it was not surprising that he opposed Obama’s Iranian Nuclear Deal. What caught me off guard was that he was using Fox News’ talking points to make his case. This included spreading the lie that the United States had paid Iran money as part of the deal. The truth…