California Democrats cast 1 out of 5 votes to impeach Trump. Here’s how they came to power
About one of every five votes for the impeachment of President Donald Trump Wednesday came from a California House member.
The House voted 230 to 197 to charge Trump with abuse of power, and 229 to 198 to charge him with obstruction of Congress, stemming from Trump’s withholding of security aid to Ukraine as a condition of the European nation announcing investigations into former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat running for president, voted present both times.
In each case, 45 of the yes votes came from California Democrats.
California’s big influence was not just because of its size, but its strong Democratic party. California has 45 Democratic House members and seven Republicans, and they all voted along party lines.
While the outcome reflects the state’s strong disdain for Trump — he won 31.5 percent of the state’s 2016 vote — it also signals a broader trend: A political shift in suburbs once considered swing areas.
“Trump’s fate illustrates the shift of the suburbs in general, particularly Orange County,” said John Pitney, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
The suburban Los Angeles county was home a generation ago to some of the nation’s most prominent conservatives. Today, it’s represented by three Democrats — Katie Porter, Harley Rouda and Mike Levin — who beat or replaced Republican incumbents in 2018.
All voted to approve both articles of impeachment against Trump.
“The president violated our Constitution — and undermined our national security — when he pressured a foreign government to interfere in our elections for his personal and political gain,” Levin said in a statement after the vote. “He then orchestrated an absolute obstruction of the impeachment inquiry, proving that he believes he is above the law.”
Pelosi’s path to power
California’s clout also illustrates how a state where the Democratic party spent years building a strong political base and infrastructure allowed party lawmakers to take the needed steps to acquire power.
Influence in Congress comes largely with seniority and savvy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the daughter and sister of former Baltimore mayors, rose to political prominence in California as a regional and state party chair and fundraiser. Elected to the House in 1987, she’s led the chamber’s Democrats since 2003 and today sets and drives the House agenda.
Other Californians have also been prominent in shaping the impeachment hearings. Rep. Adam Schiff chairs the House Intelligence Committee, which investigated a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s alleged campaign to pressure Ukraine. Reps.
Eric Swalwell and Jackie Speier are committee members. Veteran Rep. Zoe Lofgren is the second-ranking Judiciary Committee member, which also held impeachment hearings.
“Trump continues to jeopardize our national security by encouraging foreign powers to violate our sovereignty,” said Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, in a statement saying she intended to vote for both articles of impeachment. “President Trump refused to testify, and he ordered his staff to refuse as well. On its face, these are impeachable offenses and behavior that better reflects a dictator than the President of the United States.”
California is a state, though, that not long ago had an almost equally influential Republican party. Ronald Reagan was a two-term governor before becoming president, and the state elected the GOP’s Arnold Schwarzenegger to a second term in 2006.
A ‘Ukraine hoax’
Today, California Republicans still hold key positions in Congress despite their think ranks.
The House Republican Leader is Bakersfield’s Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican on the intelligence panel is Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare and Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove is a vocal member of the judiciary committee.
Nunes at Intelligence Committee hearings last month fiercely defended Trump, calling the allegations against the president a “Ukraine hoax” that reflected Democrats’ determination to unseat him.
Even as other Republicans chose to focus on what they saw as flaws in the process of impeachment or saying what Trump did was inappropriate but not impeachable, Nunes instead said Trump had every right to investigate his political adversaries.
“The only thing President Trump is guilty of is beating Hillary Clinton,” Nunes said on the House floor Wednesday. “The democrats refuse to accept that loss.”
Among Democrats, all six of the freshmen California Democrats voted to impeach Trump, illustrating the sharp divide between the two parties today. Those Democrats, who won previously seats held by Republicans, include Reps. Josh Harder, TJ Cox, Gil Cisneros, Porter, Rouda and Levin.
Can GOP reclaim seats?
The seventh freshman Democrat, Katie Hill, resigned her seat amid allegations she had relationships with both campaign and congressional staffers.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has targeted the freshmen over impeachment for months, and intends to use the vote against them next year. The White House attacked some of those congressmen specifically following their announcements that they support impeachment.
“It’s clear now that Congressman TJ Cox is putting his support for Nancy Pelosi over the needs of his constituents,” said Anthony A. Cruz, White House Director of Regional Communications.
Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, wouldn’t predict that impeachment will trigger a GOP surge. But, he said, impeachment “has certainly engaged Republicans in a manner I haven’t seen since the Tea Party movement.”
That grassroots movement, which featured conservatives angry at Obamacare and rising government spending, helped the GOP take control of the House from Democrats in 2010.
Republicans appear to need a net gain of 18 seats to win control of the House next year. Thirty-one Democratic-held seats are in districts Trump won in 2016, though none are in California.
The votes “galvanizes our party together with unity,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican who represents the northern part of the state.
Voters back in the state, he said, are “getting pretty irritated, other than the 30 percent of hardcore Democrats that want to come out no matter what’s written in there.”
‘This is a political process’
Each of the six freshmen California Democrats issued statements that closely resembled each other. They focused on what else they have accomplished outside of impeachment, and then said it was their duty to impeach Trump given the facts before them.
“Here are the facts: Our president abused his power and used your taxpayer money to advance his own personal interest, and when Congress fulfilled its duty to investigate, the president acted as if he were above the law, obstructing the investigation by withholding witnesses and subpoenaed documents,” said Cox of Fresno, who won his seat in 2018 by the narrowest margin of the state’s Democratic freshman group.
“Both of those actions violate our sacred Constitution, which only identifies one remedy for Congress to hold the president accountable,” Cox said.
The House vote to impeach Trump does not remove from office. Instead, it sends the question to the Senate, which is expected to hold a trial on the charges against Trump.
Sixty-seven senators would have to vote to convict Trump for him to be removed from office. That’s unlikely to happen with Republicans holding a majority in the Senate.
Despite her vote to approve impeachment Wednesday, Speier was even advocating for new action on withholding the articles of impeachment, hoping it could be used to negotiate a more impartial trial within the Senate.
“If you basically have the leader of the Senate saying ‘I’m going to negotiate completely with the defendant here, I’m going to talk to his attorneys and make sure we don’t do anything he doesn’t want us to do,’ that suggests that there’s not an independent review that’s going to take place,” Speier said. “And that makes a mockery of the process.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has made it clear he does not see the need for the Senate trial to be nonpartisan, saying Tuesday “I’m not an impartial juror, this is a political process.”
This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 5:52 PM with the headline "California Democrats cast 1 out of 5 votes to impeach Trump. Here’s how they came to power."
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