Kashkari targets Brown on bullet train, schools, inequality

SACRAMENTO — Republican candidate for governor Neel Kashkari pounded away Thursday at Gov. Jerry Brown’s support for a $68-billion bullet train project, calling it “the most egregious example we have of misplaced priorities.”

“Dollars are limited,” he said during a speech at the Sacramento Press Club. “We have to pick where we can make our investments.”

Kashkari wants to cancel the train, even though it may not be possible to shift much of its funding to other programs, such as education. He said he wants to prevent the state from being on the hook for much of the project’s cost if the federal government doesn’t deliver the money Brown is counting on.

Kashkari also said Democrats are failing to address income inequality in California and across the country — that programs such as welfare treat only the symptoms of poverty. Meanwhile, he said, Democrats and their supporters in the “education establishment” are leaving “poor black and brown kids” in bad schools.

“Jerry Brown’s legacy is the destruction of the middle class in California,” Kashkari said.

After the speech was over, Kashkari said he opposed Brown’s temporary tax-increase plan, approved by voters in November 2012.

“It’s not even clear it was necessary because the stock market went up so much,” he said. Brown had said the state would have needed to cut school funding by billions of dollars without the new taxes.

Two of Brown’s political advisors, Dan Newman and Ace Smith, were in the audience. Newman said he was “frankly disappointed” with the lack of specifics. Kashkari did not detail how he wants to improve California’s schools or tackle budget problems like unfunded pensions, saying he would discuss his plans when voters were paying more attention to the campaign.

“We heard nothing more than the same poll-tested drivel,” Newman said. He said Kashkari’s rhetoric has the “nutritional value of cotton candy,” which “melts into a sticky mess and leaves you with a bellyache.”

Newman defended Brown’s push for the bullet train and other improvements to the state’s rail systems, saying the alternative is more congested freeways.

“We’ve got to make big investments in a state with a lot of people who need to travel,” he said.

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chris.megerian@latimes.com

Twitter: @chrismegerian