Keep nutty Nunes as far away from Modesto as possible, please
Devin Nunes representing Modesto in Congress?
Of all the rumors swirling after the Nov. 10 release of draft boundaries for new congressional districts, this could be the most important. The last thing Modesto needs is a hard-right Trump sycophant known for suing journalists and fictional cows who never has had anything to do with us pretending to look out for our needs in the nation’s capitol.
The last thing you may have read in The Modesto Bee about redistricting — the once-a-decade process of redrawing political boundaries — focused on the crazy Nov. 10 proposed lines and surmised that both Nunes, a Tulare Republican, and Josh Harder, Stanislaus County’s congressman since 2018, could be in trouble because both apparently will lose their geographic base.
Subsequent posts by The Sacramento Bee and The Washington Free Beacon said Harder, a Turlock Democrat, will be challenged by Ricky Gill, an up-and-coming Republican from Lodi who advised the Trump administration on foreign policy. That’s certainly noteworthy.
But neither report foresaw the possibility that Harder and Nunes could be in a fight for their political lives against each other, with Modesto’s fate hanging in the balance. That news dwarfs whatever else the pundits are saying, because the idea that Modesto’s future could end up in the hands of someone so pitifully polarizing as Nunes is scary.
This is the guy who since 2019 has filed 10 lawsuits against media companies and people he claims have defamed or conspired against him, including McClatchy, the parent company of Bee newspapers in Modesto and Fresno. Nunes also has sued The Washington Post, Twitter, Esquire Magazine, NBC and CNN. He sued a peach farmer for calling Nunes a “fake farmer.”
Remember that House politicians can run for any congressional district regardless of where they actually live, unlike most other government officials. That makes forecasting House races extremely difficult before the January candidate filing period.
It’s even more precarious because the Nov. 10 proposed boundaries could and probably will change before the California Citizens Redistricting Committee finalizes them in a few weeks, probably close to Christmas.
This warning, then, about Nunes might be for naught. Why issue it?
Because Harder himself believes Nunes is gunning for him.
“Devin Nunes is planning to run against Josh,” reads a plea for contributions emailed Sunday by Harder’s campaign to supporters. It describes Nunes as “just about as extreme as they get: he’s claimed that `global warming is nonsense’ and even suggested that House Republicans’ number-one focus should be on protecting Trump.”
Harder could face an uphill battle against either Nunes or Gill if the proposed boundaries do not change.
Modesto isn’t hard-core red
They show Modesto in a new, impossibly large congressional district stretching across no less than 13 counties centered mostly on mountain areas to our east, from Lake Tahoe to Death Valley. Much of the sprawling district is sparsely populated, except one finger grabbing most of Stanislaus County east of Highway 99, including Modesto, Turlock, Riverbank and Oakdale, and Ripon and Escalon in south San Joaquin County.
The proposed congressional district would bode well for Nunes or Gill because most of that vast mountain area is quite red.
The insanity of these new lines is captured well in a recent letter to redistricting commissioners from leaders of our Black, Latino, Chinese, Jewish, Cambodian, Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh communities. They are “incredibly alarmed” at the prospect of dividing our Valley’s disadvantaged communities from each other by thrusting Modesto into a nondiverse district that would be 90% white, the letter says.
Redistricting commissioners will welcome feedback through Dec. 3 at wedrawthelinesca.org. Please consider providing some.
Stanislaus is a purple region, until now dominated neither by red nor blue. We’ve been well served in Congress by centrists, including former Republican Rep. Jeff Denham before he shifted right under Donald Trump, and Harder.
If unchanged, the new congressional district is a conservative politician’s dream come true.
And Nunes repping Modesto would be a nightmare.
This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 3:00 PM.
