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By Miriam Raftery
September 30, 2010 (El Cajon ) – Johnney P. Minarick prays perserverance will pay off. He ran for Grossmont Health Care district board in 1998, getting just 4.92% of the vote, and for Grossmont Cuyamaca Community College District’s board in 2000, drawing 18.5%. Now he’s running for Mayor of El Cajon against four other candidates (incumbent Mayor Mark Lewis and challengers John “Mike” Garcia, Todd Moore, and Darris Mroz.)
Minarick says his biggest concern is that “nonbelievers took the Bible out of schools” and belives that kids "need the Bible to learn right from wrong.” As Mayor, he would seek to “bring reading the Bible back into schools again like we used to do when we were kids in Pennsylvania.”
Asked how he would accomplish this given that he is running for Mayor, not school board, he said he would talk to school officials to try and persuade them. Asked if he had concerns that teaching the Bible in public school would violate the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state provisions, he replied, “I want Constitutional rights for people to be employed so they can have a job, a bank account, a car and a roof over their head.”
He says he is also running for Mayor to bring factories to El Cajon for people that have no jobs “and to bring driver’s education back for people to get a driver’s license so people who can’t afford the class can go to work.” He also wants more ESL (English as a second language) classes.
Listed on the ballot as a student/handyman, he says he graduated from Foothills Adult School in 2000 and recently obtained a certificate to teach the Bible in prison ministries. “I will be studying to get my bachelor degree the ministry in Oral Roberts University,” said Minarick, a member of Holy Trinity Catholic church in El Cajon. He said he attended City College and later, got a degree in private investigation and security officers training in 1989 from Central Business College. “I’m a student, going back to Cuyamaca College to do typing and bookkeeping,” he added.
He supports the East County Performing Arts Center. “I don’t think they should take it away,” he said.He said he has been a community volunteer helping clean up shopping areas and participated in neighborhood watch.
He is concerned about the high cost of living locally. “People can’t afford $1,000 a month so they are moving away from California.” He wants to see construction jobs building parks as well as factory jobs, but did not specify how he would create those jobs. “We need to boost our economy. Factories and people moving out, that’s not good for El Cajon,” he said. “If people don’t work they can’t pay taxes, property taxes. You have to work to pay taxes to keep the government going.”
A routine background check on Minarick turned up no records through the courts or County Assessor’s office.
Minarick declined to provide a photo and said he has no website or email address. He did not provide any endorsements.
East County Magazine has previously profiled mayoral candidate Scott Moore: http://eastcountymagazine.org/taxonomy/term/5645
Watch for profiles of the remaining candidates in this race soon.
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