Make the most of your plum U.S. House assignments, Reps. Duarte and McClintock | Opinion
Amid recent reports of House committee assignments snagged by high-profile Republicans — like pariah George Santos and the hard-right speaker holdouts — comes encouraging news about our own congressmen.
What do Modesto and Stanislaus County need most from our representatives? If help with farming and water are not at the very top of our list, they’re pretty darned close. And Modesto’s John Duarte, a Republican, landed spots on two committees that deal directly with farm and water policy — Agriculture, and Transportation and Infrastructure.
These assignments fulfill Duarte’s wishes — and ours. Drawing from a lifetime of running the Hughson nursery that bears his name, who better to oversee plant inspection policy?
Both the ag and infrastructure committees also deal with water conservation — a hot-button issue in current headlines with billions of gallons of storm water flowing into the Pacific at this very moment rather than being captured for later use in orchards or timed to strategically push young fish where they need to go.
Make the most of this, Rep. Duarte. We’re counting on you.
Rep. Tom McClintock, also a Republican, is expected to chair the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration — among the country’s most controversial and intractable problems for many years running. I’m not sure which he deserves more, our praise or our sympathy.
McClintock represents most of Modesto and areas east of Highway 99, while Duarte’s territory is west of the highway, plus Ceres.
Rewarding belated allegiance
And yes, several GOP reps who figured in chaotic votes before California’s Kevin McCarthy finally became speaker were handed some of their dream committee assignments. They included Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Paul Gosar of Arizona.
Santos, who may or may not have invented television, got committees dealing with science and small business instead of the higher-powered ones he wanted.
Josh Harder of San Joaquin County, who represented Stanislaus before district boundaries were redrawn, had not received committee jobs as of noon Friday because he’s a Democrat and the minority party gets assignments later. Actually, he still represents a sparsely populated sliver of Stanislaus north of Oakdale, and Ripon and Escalon are in his district.
But Harder had plenty to say in a Thursday email to supporters about assignments handed to Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was put on the powerful Homeland Security and Oversight committees.
“This is the same person,” Harder wrote, “who made disgusting comments about the Holocaust, claimed the Sandy Hook and Las Vegas shootings were staged, and spread lies that the California wildfires were started by space lasers. And now she’s in charge of keeping our homeland safe? I don’t feel any safer, I’ll tell you that much.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
