By JASON CAMPBELL

Manteca (Calif.) Bulletin

John McDonald hopes to parlay business success as a semiconductor executive into election as the 9th District Congressional representative.

The newly created seat that includes Lathrop, Stockton, and Lodi as well as parts of southern Sacramento County is being pursued by two-term Congressional incumbent Jerry McNerney who is moving from Pleasanton to Stockton and McDonald’s fellow Republican challenger 24-year-old Ricky Gill.

Last month McDonald, 43, got the chance to layout his platform to prospective voters during a candidates’ forum conducted by the South San Joaquin Republicans.

McDonald is calling for a return to the era when government “ actually benefitted the people” as they were the top priority. He cited Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 letter penned at the start of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

The project, he said, was completed only in six years piggybacking his point on the general consensus among Republicans that California’s high speed rail endeavor was a waste of time and money.

“We’ve elected a community activist and lawyer to lead our country,” McDonald said. “What we need is somebody that will lead us in the right direction.”

McDonald was trained as an electrical engineer with a history of turning around failing technology production firms in the Silicon Valley. McDonald – who champions himself as a Reagan Republican – currently works as an executive searching for startup companies.

His economic plan calls for the creation of jobs by nixing the capital gains tax and overturning the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. He is referring to the public company accountability and investor protection act that detractors believe is a government intrusion into business practices. They also contend the legislation puts American companies at a competitive disadvantage when compared to foreign counterparts.

McDonald claims that scenarios like these have cut the number of initial public offerings – a sign of innovative growth and economic health in the ever-growing technology sector – by 75 percent and slashed the number of available jobs by more than 600,000.

With more American debt owed to China than is traded on the NASDAQ market and 15.5 percent unemployment falling in San Joaquin County, he felt it was time to stand up and do something. It even prompted the Republican defector – who left the party under George W. Bush’s tenure out of protest over his spending – to come back home.

“I’ve been a Republican all my life. Nonetheless, I was appalled by the extremely high spending during the George W Bush Presidency, so much so that I dropped my Republican registration in protest,” he writes on his website. “It was hard to imagine how a Democrat could spend more. Well, President Obama and the Democrats have succeeded in making G.W. Bush look frugal and so I quickly re-registered as a Republican.”