Rep. John Duarte — crossover politician, or Republican yes-man? | Opinion
Time will tell whether Rep. John Duarte of Modesto, who won one of the closest congressional races in the United States last year, is committed to the bipartisan values he says he holds, or is a GOP lackey of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
100 days into the job, Duarte gets points for showing up — making public appearances throughout the 13th Congressional District, and answering every question of The Modesto Bee Editorial Board. He said at the end of an hour-long meeting, “I’m your congressman. I’m happy to come and interview. We can agree and disagree, but I’ll tell you where I’m at.”
Many of Duarte’s views on water, commuter rail and immigration seem reasonable. The Hughson nursery owner appears to have a grasp on needs of farmers — his clients — including migrant labor. His vision of granting legal status to undocumented workers reflects both reality in the Central Valley and the one area he might run into trouble with Republican Party leadership.
That he has yet to introduce any legislation of his own may not be surprising for a freshman House member still getting his feet under him. But experience is not likely to change his refusal to back the assault weapons ban supported by a majority of Americans, and his repeated messaging to for drill oil can be off-putting. Environmentalists will cringe at Duarte’s suggestions for dredging waterways and whacking sea otters.
One thing is sure: Duarte will run for reelection in 2024, and like every House member, will never get a break from campaigning. Democrats already have targeted his district, which includes everything west of Highway 99 in Stanislaus County plus Ceres and small slices of Modesto and Turlock, as well as Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera and San Joaquin counties. He beat former state Assemblyman Adam Gray in November by 564 votes, of nearly 134,000 cast. That’s just 0.42%.
Here are excerpts of Duarte’s interview with The Bee, edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: How does one effectively represent five counties?
A: These families I represent have a pretty homogeneous set of challenges — inflation is too high, the cost of living is too high and job opportunities have gone away. (We need to) get water on the farms, drill American oil and get the cost of living under control — that was (my) campaign, and I haven’t had to change or adjust it from one end of the district to the other.
Q: What is your approach to water policy?
A: We’re flushing tens of millions of acre-feet out through the Delta under the Golden Gate Bridge purportedly to restore salmon and Delta smelt. The smelt are dead and we have not restored salmon. We’ve taken huge irrigated landscapes out, and that’s affecting human health. In the South Valley it’s causing a dust bowl, with high pediatric respiratory illness, children with severe asthma and Valley fever trending higher every year. It’s causing economic strife and threatening the food system. So we have to start managing the infrastructure we have better. How? First, more flood plain restoration, like we have west of Modesto.
We’re letting seals and otters just eat the heck out of the salmon as they go out to the ocean. Nobody likes to think of marine mammals shot or controlled, but at the end of the day, we have to choose a way to balance all these interests. We also have species of bass all throughout the Delta. At a minimum, take the (fishing) limits off. Can we just catch all the bass we want and get the predators out of the Delta?
Another thing is restoring channel flow in our drainages. We need to dredge rivers, creeks and the Delta, build up the levee system and get flood control assets back in order. I’m now (working on) an exemption to NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act) that would let the Army Corps of Engineers and the irrigation districts get in there and clean these waterways and get flood channel capacity back up where it needs to be. That’s critical for public safety this year. We’ve got so much snow in the mountains that we cannot easily manage (snowmelt) with the draining channels we have.
Q: Is the proposed Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir a good idea?
A: Yes. I’ve put in for community project funding — it used to be called earmarks — for the reservoir. It’s an important reservoir with 82,000 acre-feet of off-stream storage and low impact to the canyon.
Q: What about the farm bill?
A: We’ve got to get more farmers off disaster relief funding and into crop insurance. Walnut growers pay 120% tariffs going into India; it’s retaliatory because there was an American steel dispute. Anytime America stands its ground on a trade dispute and doesn’t want to become a dumping ground, agriculture gets hit because they know they can cause a lot of political pain for Congress, but more and more, trade retaliations have nothing to do with agriculture. So we should supplement farmers’ revenue to offset these tariffs and keep agriculture healthy.
Q: What are your priorities on the transportation committee?
A: We’ve got to cut congestion getting to the Bay Area. Many mornings I’m driving to the San Francisco airport and the congestion is all between Manteca and Livermore; it’s like a funnel to keep Valley residents away from the Bay Area job market. I want to get that transportation corridor opened up with roadway expansion.
(Highway) 99 should be four and five lanes all the way down. I-5 is the same as when I was born in 1966. It’s hurting economic opportunity in California and coming down on the backs of working families in the Valley disproportionately.
Q: What’s your position on high-speed rail?
A: It’s a joke and a waste of money, and it’s in the way of building the infrastructure we need in California. The cost overruns could build conventional commuter rail, which I think is sensible.
Q: Tell us what you think about a federal assault weapons ban.
A: I won’t support it, and I don’t think it’s doable without a constitutional amendment. It isn’t a matter of a simple act of Congress.
Q: What would common-sense gun control look like?
A: In California we’ve got background checks and a waiting period and we’ve had an assault weapons ban, and we still have huge gun crime. Chicago has had gun control for decades. You can’t correlate access to firearms with gun death. Bad guys get guns, and law-abiding citizens have a right to bear arms. I don’t think additional banning of weapons types is going to get us more public safety.
Background checks are important. If you can find a way to account for mental health, that would be great, but we don’t have anything close today to provide for that.
Q: Who do you like in the GOP presidential primary?
A: I don’t support anyone in particular right now. I will support the Republican candidate for president. I’m actually excited to see the Republican primary debates. I’m interested in seeing which ones the American people respond to. I want to see which can attract crossover swing voters to carry a majority so we can get policies that I believe will move America forward.
Q: Name an example of a decent crossover policy.
A: On immigration, we need a guest worker program that’s humane, fair, flexible and adaptable. People here need to get up and go to work and have a legal presence. I don’t care about a path to citizenship; I care about getting them out of the shadows and giving them an opportunity in America. We need a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) fix and strong immigration policy that allows people to come to America to pursue their futures. We need welders as much as we need teachers right now. We need plumbers and electricians. But we’ve got to secure the border; it’s unacceptable the way it is. The first step is to normalize the people already here, playing a positive role in our economy and communities.
Q: Why did you go into politics?
A: To do what I’m doing. The House of Congress was conceived for the common guy, for real people to go from the community, serve in Washington, D.C., do their thing and represent, then come home. I’ve joked that after 33 years in the farm nursery business, it’s impossible for me to be a career politician.
