Eighty-two-year old Auntie Maxine has a serious challenger for her longtime seat in Congress. Republican Joe Collins is running against incumbent Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters to represent California’s 43rd District, which includes portions of Los Angeles and Torrance, and all of Hawthorne, Lawndale, Gardena, Inglewood, and Lomita.
He is going hard on Waters. His recent attack ad has going viral. In it, he insists that in Waters’ 44 years in Congress hasn’t improved the “war zone” of South L.A. “For the last 44, where has Maxine Waters been?” he shouts.
The response to the campaign ad has been swift. Many say it misrepresents Waters.
Filmmaker and activist Tariq Nasheed tweeted, “Most of this was NOT filmed in South LA. This is a Right Wing white supremacist orchestrated propaganda piece, similar to the Kim Klasik propaganda piece in Baltimore. Notice how this never mentions POLICIES to help all these ‘poor Black people’. This is a ‘we need more cops’ ad”.
The ad starts out with Collins standing in front of a mansion he claims is the home of Waters. He says it is not in her district. He later contrasts this house with the “deadly” streets of South L.A. Problem is, one Twitter user said, Waters’ home was in the district until the city rezoned the neighborhood.
“If you’re going to run against @RepMaxineWaters you should be honest,” @toniinoc tweeted. “Her home was in her district before the district realignment. A $6 million dollar home sounds really expensive for ppl living in mid America; in LA it is a mid priced home. The purchase price was far less.”
“Maxine does not live in Hancock Park. She lives in Vermont Knolls,” Pilarious_CA KH202X BLM @CaPilarious tweeted. “The video is filled with deception. I’m also born & raised here, & am appalled by your presentation, Mr Collins. Honesty would mean discussing specific policy differences, not this simplistic twisted propaganda.”
Others tweeted support for Waters’ record.
“She’s been a public servant for over 40 years. She has been active in LA communities for the duration; do research. Plus, when someone has been with a company for an extended period of time, they are able to do better for themselves. Right? Sooooo..what is your point?” @AlisonJenae tweeted.
Waters has been in office since 1991 and that’s too long for Collins, who said the number of years one serves in politics should be capped. If he wins this race, he said he’d only serve eight years maximum.
“She became an assembly woman in 1976, and she got into Congress in the ’91, ’92 years. And when we look at the amount of productivity that we’ve been able to gain within our community under the leadership of Maxine Waters, I mean when it came to the year 2000 and beyond, we have gotten no opportunities,” Collin told Spectrum News 1. “And the main thing that Maxine Waters that she sticks to is the issue of race. Everything is racism. Everything is racist, and she’s still taking us back to the Jim Crow era. She wants to take us back to the era where Dr. Martin Luther King was marching for freedom, and I understand because that is where the crux of her life is, but we’re moving forward.”
Collins often goes in on Rep. Waters on Twitter. In one video, he says, “Nobody likes you. You need to retire. You’re 82 years old. You’re entirely… we’re so sick of you. It’s ridiculous.”
Collins said he has “a five-point plan to develop the economy, rebuild relations between law enforcement and civilians, overhaul the education program, and improve the quality of life in the 43rd District,” Spectrum News 1 reported.
“I want to incentivize businesses to come back to California, to come back to Los Angeles, and that means getting rid of a lot of red tape that we have when it comes to development and California, getting rid of the taxes that we have in California,” Collins said. ”We’re going to need a representative that’s going to challenge the state of California when it comes to things like taxes. We know our tax dollars are going to waste when we can utilize those funds for something more positive like improving education. Once we get that tax situation under control, we can easily use the low cost of building, the low cost of development to incentivize quality businesses to come back and hire people from communities and give them really good jobs.”
Collins, a Trump supporter, hasn’t always been a Republican. He turned Republican in 2004.
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Collins was raised in the District he will represent, living there until his family moved to Dallas, he said, to escape the crime of South L.A. He and members of his family survived a driveby shooting. As an adult, Collins enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He rose to the rank of Petty Officer First Class and began his career specializing as a naval jet aviation mechanic. He left the Navy in 2017, according to his website.
