It was his neighbors who sent him on his career in public service, on the regional Farm Service Agency board. His community elected him to the Lassen County Board of Supervisors, and after four terms he ran for a seat in the California Legislature, where he has served since 2012.

He continues to operate his family's farm and seed business back home in Bieber, where he and his wife, Megan Dahle, have raised their three children Chase, Reagan and Roslyn. In public life he has learned what works in government and what does not.

As a small-business owner, he has learned firsthand what it's like to have your life's work regulated to death by the state bureaucracy thanks to politicians who think they can solve every problem in the world if they just pass one more bill. As a husband and father, he knows that all Californians deserve to be safe from crime and have a good school.

Bad decisions in Sacramento have given Californians a crushing housing shortage with little new construction but tent cities everywhere. We pay the highest electric bills in the West despite chronic blackouts. We pump the most expensive gasoline in America even as the state refuses to put its high taxes to use to widen highways and relieve congestion. We're a prosperous state but have the nation's worst poverty rate adjusting for the cost of living thanks largely to decisions made in Sacramento.

Ordinary Californians need a government that understands their needs and will work for them, and a governor who'll say no to a Legislature that thinks it needs to pass a thousand new laws every year.