On Thursday night, Rob Bonta, Abel Guillen and Joel Young made compelling points on current issues within the East Bay as the three candidates for the 18th Assembly District met in their first debate.

Guillen is a second term trustee on the Peralta Community College board and has focused his campaign around creating better opportunities for minorities within public education. He also spoke on creating a California Bank which re-invested money back into California communities as well as creating jobs.

Young, the AC Transit Director-at-Large in Alameda and Contra Costa County, has focused his campaign on the creation and investment of jobs within the California economy. He emphasized how his creativity and boldness is what California needs to get back on track and to create an environment where small businesses can flourish.

Bonta, the Vice Mayor of Alameda, has taken to public safety, public education and job creation. He made it clear that he was the only candidate with a family.

The 90-minute debate, hosted by the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association in Oakland, left time at the end for the audience’s questions.

Each question was allowed a minute and a half response from each candidate as well as a 30-second rebuttal after everyone had answered. None of the candidates utilized the rebuttal time very well, with Guillen making the only real rebuttal and Bonta using it only on one occasion to talk more about his points.

The questions were split into relevant questions about each candidate’s plan, hypothetical questions and queries into their personal experience and qualifications.

The major topics of the debate focused around the current financial crisis and job market in California. Young stated his campaign’s focus was on creating and investing in California jobs, especially for startup businesses.

When questioned about Governor Brown’s tax initiative, all were expressly in favor of it except Young. The tax initiative will put a 3 percent tax increase on the super wealthy as well as increasing sales tax but a quarter of a percent if it passes this November.

“I believe that we don’t want to tax ourselves,” said Young, “and the fact that we have to look at this shows that we have to be thinking about how to grow our economy and how do we put people back to work so we don’t have to tax ourselves in the future.”

Guillen and Bonta both wanted more taxes on the wealthy, but Guillen was against the quarter percent sales tax increase.

“I think sales taxes in the state are pretty high,” said Guillen, “it taxes everyday people who are just living paycheck to paycheck.”

The high speed rail also had support from all three candidates, although Bonta showed more interest in it as a bold move to push California forward.

“One of the things that California should do is be bold,” stated Bonta, “do big innovative projects that will have a lot of job creation, but I do worry about the increasing expenses.”

The newly drawn 18th Assembly District that the candidates are campainging for covers most of Oakland and the cities of San Leandro and Alameda.