Engineering a plan for the state’s future

Alicia Robinson

With his years of experience in engineering, Long Pham thinks he

could fill a knowledge gap in the Legislature that led to the state’s

energy crisis in 2000 and 2001.

Pham is one of six Republicans competing for the 70th Assembly

District seat.

Pham holds a doctorate in engineering and has worked in the

industry since 1979, most recently as a nuclear engineer.

“I’m running now because I found out we do not have anyone [in the

Legislature] for the last 15 or 20 years with the engineering and

business background who understands the engineering industry,” he

said.

“I would bring not only my own background, my knowledge, but also

the knowledge of the rest of the industry,” he added.

Originally from Vietnam, Pham chose to study engineering because

the field promised jobs and the opportunity to see other parts of the

world, he said.

He had planned to go to France because he speaks the language, but

when he left Vietnam he ended up in Pennsylvania, where he decided to

stay after making friends there. A job offer as a nuclear designer at

Bechtel Corp. brought him to California in 1979.

In recent years, Pham has dealt with legislative issues as vice

president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. With

jurisdiction over a three-state area, the group follows

engineering-related legislation and gives input from the industry to

the governors’ offices.

In 2002, the group was able to convince Gov. Gray Davis’

administration not to replace privately owned utility companies with

a state-owned power provider, a plan that has failed in other states,

Pham said.

This isn’t Pham’s first political venture. In 1995, he helped

found a Vietnamese voters’ coalition to get people registered to vote

and involve them in politics.

“I believe we have an excellent system, but the system requires

the participation of both the candidate and the voter,” he said.

Because he disagreed with a stance on fiscal policy taken by Rep.

Dana Rohrabacher in 2000, Pham ran for Rohrabacher’s 46th District

Congressional seat.

His other government experience includes participating in a

regulatory round table called by former Gov. Pete Wilson in 1995. The

group of engineering industry experts was able to get 3,900 obsolete

regulations repealed and have more than 1,700 regulations amended to

make them more business-friendly, Pham said.

“I believe that because of that landmark [deregulation], the state

was able to attract more business to California after Gov. Wilson

left, and we need to do that again,” he said.