Desperately seeking Stanislaus County Republican to represent us in Congress
I’m grumpy today — for Stanislaus County.
Because it looks like we’re about to go from having our own U.S. House representative to having someone else’s.
Did we take for granted this past decade the great blessing of having Stanislaus County in its entirety unified in one congressional district?
Everything changed when the once-a-decade redistricting process recently produced new boundaries, and Stanislaus just like that was split between two House seats (actually three, but we’ll focus on the main two). Roughly stated, areas west of Highway 99 plus Ceres and Empire will be in the 13th District, and everything else will be in the Fifth. Glaring exceptions, especially in Turlock where the line swerves east of the freeway, make me even more grouchy, but that’s a discussion for another day.
It’s bad enough that hypothetically, Stanislaus County could have two congressional representatives with diametrically opposed approaches trying to improve our lot.
It got worse when the congressman we’ve counted on since 2018, Josh Harder, decided to run for neither. He will campaign in the Ninth District centered on Stockton and San Joaquin County.
So why the melancholy?
Strictly by the numbers, about two-thirds of Stanislaus residents are in the Fifth District, and the other third in the 13th. The Modesto Bee surely will cover and care about the 13th District, which remains hugely important to us, and I’ve focused earlier columns on that race.
But most of our two largest cities — Modesto and Turlock — and four others (Riverbank, Oakdale, Waterford and Hughson) are in the Fifth. Although it stretches across eight counties, more Fifth voters by far live in Stanislaus than in any of the other seven (Tuolumne, Calaveras, Mariposa, Madera, Fresno, El Dorado and Amador).
The Fifth should be ours. Its heart is us. And at this point, the two front runners live in Elk Grove and Clovis.
Those cities respectively are in Sacramento and Fresno counties, 62 miles north of Modesto and 103 miles south. Nowhere near us.
For the record, House members don’t have to live in the districts they represent, unlike other public offices.
GOP donnybrook on tap
Before this week, the Fifth seemed a lock for conservative Republican Congressman Tom McClintock, the one from Elk Grove. On Monday, Nathan Magsig of Clovis — also a conservative Republican, and a Fresno County supervisor — announced his intent to join the race for the Fifth. If neither pulls out, that primary could be a doozy.
I still think McClintock is the early favorite, because he’s already representing 41% of the new Fifth. Magsig’s message, which seems less hard-right, might resonate better with many Stanislaus voters, but add in the mountain counties from El Dorado down to Fresno and overall the district preferred Donald Trump by 12 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. It’s a solid red district, which explains why Harder, a Democrat, went north.
Can’t Stanislaus Republicans come up with someone we already appreciate and might support? A proven vote-getter and money raiser who knows us and loves us? Someone with the stature of, say, Kristin Olsen, or Anthony Cannella, or Vito Chiesa, or Bill Berryhill?
Of course, other announced candidates around here — Kelsten Obert, Jolene Daly, Steve Wozniak, Mike Barkley — will have a few months to prove themselves and curry favor with voters. And maybe some other savvy Stanislaus public servant will feel the pull before the filing period closes in mid-March.
But if the landscape doesn’t shift, it’s likely that most of Stanislaus County soon will be represented in Congress by someone we hardly know.
This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
