Congressman Duarte can run, but he Can’t Hide

California Congressman John Duarte insists that he’s a moderate Republican willing to go against the doctrinaire commands of his party. Nonetheless, Duarte knows any candidate for office in today’s Party of Trump (PoT) who steps even a millimeter over the line of Trumpist dogma risks the fiery fury of der wannabe Fuehrer.

Independence in today’s PoT Congress results in swift excommunication — just ask Liz Cheney and Kevin McCarthy. True dissidents from the party line will be pilloried, primaried, and denied party campaign funds. That last penalty — denial of party funds — is the candidate’s kiss of death and Duarte knows it.

Duarte’s “moderation” includes backing both Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson for Speaker of the House, both of whom helped kill a bipartisan immigration bill that was supported by the Border Patrol Union, the South Texas Alliance of Cities, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Wall Street Journal. The bill was killed because Donald Trump needed a campaign issue.

Like all of today’s PoT-heads, Duarte has remained silent while Donald Trump and J.D. Vance spew vile lies about legal immigrants with the intention of scapegoating them for every national ill from housing shortages to the cost of living. The failure of Republicans everywhere to condemn this reprehensible nativism and race baiting is despicable.

Duarte likes to boast about his record on water, but it was John Duarte who paid a $1.1 million fine for violations of the Clean Water Act that included,  “illegal ‘ripping’ of federally-protected streams and wetlands.”

Duarte’s opponent, Adam Gray, delivered positive action on water when he acquired funding for Dos Rios State Park as a member of the California State Assembly. In addition to providing public recreational opportunities, Dos Rios will provide flood control, groundwater recharge, and habitat for migrating salmon. Those are concrete, measurable public benefits, diametrically opposite Duarte’s destructive history on water.

If voters really want an independent voice in Washington D.C., they can look to Adam Gray’s record as an Assemblyman. Gray routinely broke with his party when he felt it threatened his local constituents’ own interests, most notably when he supported the rights of local water districts when the state threatened them.

John Duarte is a member of one of the most dysfunctional government bodies in U.S. history, today’s Republican House of Representatives. If he were a true moderate, he wouldn’t have supported Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson for Speaker of the House, both of whom helped oust Kevin McCarthy from leadership. McCarthy was the Valley’s single most powerful congressional leader until he earned the ire of Trump — yet another example of what happens to those who buck the party line.

Recent natural disasters in the southeast United States should be a reminder that we are all in this country together, sailing through space on an ever more fragile globe that has become dependent on our stewardship for clean water, clean air, and a sustainable future. We will need bipartisan leadership to achieve those goals, and Adam Gray is the only candidate for office in California’s Congressional District 13 qualified to deliver true bipartisan leadership, including the kind that produced the best immigration bill in our history, a bill that was killed by congressional PoT-heads in Washington D.C.

John Duarte can run from today’s extremist Republican Party, but he can’t hide. He’s part of a movement to replace representative democracy with a totalitarian regime that has already celebrated ripping away women’s rights while campaigning on a platform of nativism, scapegoating and oppression.