Dan Newhouse’s political future was imperiled by his January 2021 impeachment vote. Can he appease the Trump cult?

Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dan New­house has enjoyed a backbencher’s life as a Repub­li­can from a safe dis­trict in the inland West: He’s called for with­draw­al of fed­er­al pro­tec­tion from wolves, opposed rein­tro­duc­tion of griz­zly bears, and reg­u­lar­ly joined Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (R‑WA-5th Dis­trict) in defend­ing salmon-destroy­ing dams on the low­er Snake River.

He had a sear­ing expe­ri­ence and flash of con­science ear­ly this year, how­ev­er, when a mob of Trump sup­port­ers invad­ed the U.S. Con­gress in a bid to stop the count of elec­toral votes mak­ing Joe Biden our forty-sixth president.

New­house sub­se­quent­ly became one of just ten Repub­li­cans to vote for the sec­ond impeach­ment of Trump in the Unit­ed States House.

The furies of the far right in Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton were imme­di­ate­ly unleashed.

Par­ty groups cen­sured New­house. Ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Brad Klip­pert, R‑Kennewick, announced he would chal­lenge New­house in 2022. He was fol­lowed into the race by Loren Culp, for­mer “chief” of Republic’s one-per­son police depart­ment and 2020 Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for Governor.

New­house has rea­son to fear such folk. In cap­tur­ing the seat of retir­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Doc Hast­ings, he faced off in 2014 against Tea Par­ty Repub­li­can, Eltopia farmer Clint Didi­er. An eleventh hour “inde­pen­dent” expen­di­ture by main­stream Repub­li­cans – with foot­prints from ex-Sen­a­tor Slade Gor­ton — defined Didi­er as a kook and pow­ered New­house to a win. Didi­er is now a Franklin Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er who tried to repeal Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 restrictions.

The prospect of los­ing his seat in 2022 has pushed New­house fur­ther to the right. He may not like griz­zly bears, but Dan has become a seri­ous pan­der bear. Just this week, he stood up, in a House floor vote on Tues­day, for the likes of Jef­fer­son Davis, John C. Cal­houn, and pre-Civ­il War U.S. Chief Jus­tice Roger Taney.

The House vot­ed, 285–120, to ban stat­ues of Con­fed­er­ates from Stat­u­ary Hall in the U.S. Capi­tol, where Jef­fer­son Davis stands tall, as well as Cal­houn and oth­er pre-Civ­il War defend­ers of slav­ery… along with the infa­mous Roger Taney.

Taney, you’ll hope­ful­ly recall, wrote the infa­mous 1857 Dred Scott deci­sion, which held that Black peo­ple were not U.S. cit­i­zens, could not sue the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and that Con­gress could not pro­hib­it slav­ery in Amer­i­can territories.

Six­ty-sev­en House Repub­li­cans joined a unan­i­mous line­up of Democ­rats in vot­ing for the stat­ue ban. All one hun­dred and twen­ty votes came from Repub­li­cans, main­ly from the “con­fed­er­ate” states that once rebelled against the Union and pro­ceed­ed to wage war on the Unit­ed States over slav­ery. All sev­en Wash­ing­ton House Democ­rats, on the oth­er hand, vot­ed aye, as did Repub­li­can Jamie Her­rera Beut­ler (R‑WA-3rd Dis­trict), the del­e­ga­tion’s most fre­quent aisle crosser.

Even Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers vot­ed for the measure.

Dan New­house was the only Ever­green State law­mak­er to vote no.

He has yet to explain his vote.

Mean­while, he is pan­der­ing on oth­er fronts.

Seek­ing to shore up Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion sup­port – the NRA backed him against Didi­er – New­house has joined onto leg­is­la­tion cat­e­go­rize those employed by the firearms indus­try as “essen­tial work­ers.” To “restrict the rights of law-abid­ing gun own­ers” in a time of cri­sis is “uncon­scionable”, claims Newhouse.

New­house was one of one hun­dred and eighty-eight House Repub­li­cans who vot­ed no on Wednes­day when the cham­ber approved House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi’s pro­pos­al to set up a select com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion that so upset and angered him just a few months ago.

Only Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Liz Cheney (R‑Wyoming) and Adam Kinzinger (R‑Illinois) vot­ed aye. They are the two peo­ple in the House Repub­li­can cau­cus who have been the most will­ing since last Novem­ber to break with Trump.

New­house has also signed up for the Repub­li­cans’ cul­ture wars.

He has joined as a cospon­sor of two bills that would seek to block crit­i­cal race the­o­ry from being pro­mot­ed by gov­ern­ment or taught in America’s pub­lic schools. “Teach­ing stu­dents to be ashamed of our coun­try and to judge each oth­er based on the col­or of their skin is wrong and divi­sive: Crit­i­cal race the­o­ry has no place in our schools,” New­house said in a state­ment last week.

Huh? New­house comes from an old farm­ing fam­i­ly in the Yaki­ma Val­ley. Migrant work­ers, pre­dom­i­nant­ly Lati­no and His­pan­ic, have long faced bul­warks of dis­crim­i­na­tion designed by those in power.

As Yakima’s Catholic Bish­op Joseph Tyson point­ed out in a mem­o­rable homi­ly, the state’s agri­cul­ture indus­try is built on the backs of new Amer­i­cans… work­ers who are in many cas­es undoc­u­ment­ed, but who belong to our soci­ety nonetheless.

What else? At-large vot­ing has dilut­ed work­ers’ polit­i­cal pow­er. The one minor­i­ty-major­i­ty leg­isla­tive dis­trict in the val­ley had a big dent in its bound­aries exclud­ing Lati­no neigh­bor­hoods. Sure­ly New­house is aware of work­er hous­ing con­di­tions for years exposed by Hil­da Bryant in the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer.

The state Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, once head­ed by New­house, was long imper­vi­ous to work­er com­plaints about pes­ti­cide and her­bi­cide use.

The strug­gle for civ­il and human rights in Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton can no more be ignored than the region’s sum­mer heat. Trans­for­ma­tion of the Yaki­ma Val­ley over the past eighty years has every place in class­rooms of the val­ley, and the state.

But social jus­tice is anath­e­ma to the Repub­li­can base, so New­house deliv­ers the boil­er­plate he knows is expect­ed of him. “Biden has aban­doned his com­mit­ment to equal treat­ment under the law with his most recent pro­pos­al to fund crit­i­cal race the­o­ry pro­pos­als,” reads anoth­er broad­side from the congressman.

And then there is New­house­’s rhetoric on China.

The world’s most pop­u­lous coun­try, cur­rent­ly con­trolled by Xi Jin­ping and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty, is New­house­’s most recent bête noire.

The con­gress­man is warn­ing that the Unit­ed States can nev­er become depen­dent on Chi­na for “our domes­tic food sup­ply”. This from a guy whose dis­trict exports agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts worth bil­lions of dol­lars to Chi­na and many oth­er countries.

New­house wants to pro­hib­it Chi­nese-con­trolled enti­ties from pur­chas­ing any more agri­cul­tur­al lands in Amer­i­ca, and make exist­ing Chi­nese-owned land inel­i­gi­ble for fed­er­al farm programs.

Such is the price seem­ing­ly extract­ed from one prin­ci­pled moment tak­ing on Don­ald Trump. The cult-like Trump fol­low­ing is not of a mind to for­give, or forget.

Nor are lead­ers of the Loren Culp cult like­ly to over­look a new mon­ey-mak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. “Hang Pence!” chant­ed Trump fol­low­ers at the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6th. Sim­i­lar cries are now being heard in Cen­tral Washington.

The pan­der bear has become an endan­gered species.