The camera pans to framed photos of five little boys with cropped hair, smiles on their faces and button-down shirts, while Orange County congressional candidate Scott Baugh says: “They were five brothers. One of them had his own struggles. I miss him every day.”
“Addiction doesn’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. It’s a disease that affects millions of people, and it’s personal to me,” Baugh says.
AdvertisementThe program, which begins airing Wednesday, marks the first time Baugh, 62, has publicly discussed the fentanyl death of his younger brother in 2020. He said his first priority in Congress would be tackling the fentanyl epidemic.
The ad gives a deeply personal tone to the tense election for coastal Orange County’s 47th Congressional District. The seat is one of a handful of up for grabs across the U.S. seen as crucial To determine which party will control the House of Representatives after the November elections.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) introduced a resolution Candidacy for US Senate Instead of running for re-election to the House, Baugh lost the primary election, so the district has no incumbent candidate. Baugh, the former Orange County GOP chairman, said, Lost to Porter lead by 3.4 percentage points in the 2022 midterm elections. They will face State Senator Dave Min (D-Irvine) will contest the election in November.
In an interview, Baugh struggled to keep his composure while talking about his younger brother, Randy. He was a friendly person who loved to cook for friends and strangers and would often make chocolate chip cookies on Saturday nights, he said.
“He was a man who would give his shirt if needed, whether he needed it or not,” Baugh said. “He had a servant’s heart.”
Randy became addicted to painkillers after back surgery about a decade ago, Baugh said. She said the family tried to help him for years, including twice sending him to a drug rehabilitation program.
In the spring of 2020, Randy’s adult children found him unconscious at home in Orange County. He died at the age of 56.
Addiction is “kind of an abstract problem until you see someone’s life destroyed by it,” Baugh said. “You realize this is not a situation where you can just tell someone to snap out of it. This is not a situation where you can tell someone to pull themselves up on their own. In most of these cases, they don’t have that ability.”
Nearly 75,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdoses last year, including 6,850 Californians, according to federal and state health officials.
Fentanyl has become an election issue, used primarily by Republicans to criticize the Biden administration and Democrats for not doing more to prevent illegal immigration and secure the border.
But only a handful of politicians have made the human tragedy of the opioid crisis a campaign issue, and even fewer of them have talked about losing a loved one to an overdose.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat who is running for governor, released an advertisement One this summer featured a grieving mother whose son died of a fentanyl overdose. And in a crucial Senate race in Pennsylvania, Republican Dave McCormick recently ran an ad criticizing incumbent Senator Bob Casey for failing to address the crisis. A local sheriff said Whose son died of overdose in 2020.
At the urging of former President Trump, Senate Republicans this year Blocked bipartisan agreement This would provide approximately $20 billion for additional enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border, including to combat drug trafficking.
During last week’s presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris accused Trump of prioritizing political gain over the well-being of Americans and said he “would rather walk on the problem than fix it.”
From the data US Border Patrol The survey shows that nearly 90% of fentanyl seized at the border in recent years was from legal points of entry, and 91% of seizures were from U.S. citizens.
It broadly includes 62,000 pounds of fentanyl The amount smuggled into California last year and seized by law enforcement was what Governor Gavin Newsom said was “enough to kill nearly twice the world’s population.”
Baugh said those figures don’t reflect drugs that are moving across the border without being seized.
Baugh said that in Congress he would address the fentanyl crisis by attempting to stop the flow of the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We need strong immigration, but we also need to know who is coming and what they are bringing with them,” Baugh said. “We need to make sure that fentanyl, which is a poison in particular, stays out of our country.”
After his brother’s death, Baugh became a founding board member of a non-profit in Orange County called fentanyl solutionThe organization distributes naloxone, sometimes known by the brand names Narcan or Cloxado — a nasal spray that can prevent fatal opioid overdoses if administered in time — and trains people how to use it.
Shane Wood, a Santa Ana resident and the nonprofit’s executive director, said Baugh helped connect the group with CalOptima, which manages health insurance plans for low-income residents in Orange County, to help distribute thousands of additional doses of naloxone.
Wood credited Baugh with breaking the stigma of talking about fentanyl deaths, a topic he said is often discussed behind closed doors. He said the organization, which is a nonprofit, will not be endorsing any candidate in the congressional race.
He said he hoped Min or Baugh would advocate for “comprehensive reform and mental health recovery services” in Congress.
He said he also hopes Baugh or Min will pressure local governments to spend money already received for opioid elimination to get more doses of naloxone out to people who would use it.
Baugh said he would consider supporting House bills that address addiction issues, because addiction is so closely tied to California’s homelessness problems. But, he added: “We have to be careful when the federal government comes in with a one-size-fits-all solution. … You need some accountability structures to make sure that the dollars are going to the right places, to the right people, and being spent efficiently.”
