From The Hill: The next prescription “Dr. Drew” Pinsky writes might be for his own congressional run in Southern California.
“I wake up every day and drive through this town and I am morally moved where I feel like I have to do something,” the famed addiction medicine specialist and former “Loveline” host tells ITK.
“We have people literally dying in our streets,” he says, contending the Los Angeles County and statewide government is “not functioning.”
“People have sort of been swirling around me, going, ‘Oh, you should run for mayor.’ Well I didn’t really want that job. ‘Well, you should run for governor.’ Well, that’s not really possible. So I was sort of thinking about these things,” says Pinsky, who spoke last month about homelessness and drug abuse at a mental health summit at the White House.
With a political run on the brain, he says the televised impeachment hearings may have jolted him even more into the idea of trading medicine for a House bid.
“I was watching all the impeachment proceedings and I was going, ‘oh my God, our Congress is tied up and we’re dying out here in California. What are these people doing?’ ”
Pinsky, 61, says he soon realized he’s lived for 20 years in Pasadena, in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) district.
“I thought, ‘oh my God, I have to run for that office at least just to get him to start participating in the governance of this region.’ ”
While his core issues would be infrastructure, tackling homelessness and aiding the chronically mentally ill, Pinsky makes clear he would be a reluctant candidate.
“Believe me, I don’t want to,” he says of a possible run for Congress.
“I’d have to change my whole life, and I’m not really prepared to do that just yet,” the father of three adds.
