-by Audrey Denney,Candidate for Congress, CA-01I spent the last year traveling around beautiful California District 1. I had the privilege to sit in coffee shops, on farms and in community centers with the good people who live here. One of the most common concerns I heard from people across the political spectrum was that Congressman Doug LaMalfa does not effectively do his job of representing the real people of our communities. Two days ago, we saw that exemplified. Rep. Mike Thompson wrote a letter condemning the recent statements from the President about withholding federal aid to those of us struggling to recover from our recent disasters. The letter firmly demanded the President retract the statement, apologize and commit to making sure we get the funding we need to recover. Our Congressman’s signature is not found on that document and instead, he released a note stating he trusts that the President will keep his promise to assist in this tragedy.None of this should surprise us. Our Representative, Doug LaMalfa stood by as the President stood in the ashes of the fire and repeatedly misstated the name of the city where so many of my friends, 2018 campaign supporters and neighbors lived. The President then took the opportunity to minimize an extraordinarily complex number of factors such as forest management, urban planning, disaster planning, climate change, and simple unfortunate weather into blaming the residents themselves for their devastation when just days before they were fleeing for their lives through an unfathomable inferno.In that moment, an effective Representative should have defended those who survived and those who failed to make it out alive. An effective Representative’s number one priority in times of disaster and tragedy is to assist and make the path forward easier, not to stand by silently while survivors and victims are blamed when the fires were still burning. This is not the moment for partisan games where our elected officials blame those struggling to take a step forward in recovery. This is not the moment for the President to threaten to stop all federal disaster funding to California because he is losing a political battle and needs to save his unnecessary border wall funding. This is not the moment for the President to cause additional pain and suffering for an entire region that is already traumatized.I am grateful for those I see every day from across California and across the nation who are standing up to these threats made from the White House. Elected officials from across the political spectrum have come forward to condemn these funding threats like the two Republicans who represent this area in the state legislature-- State Sen. Jim Nielsen and Assemblyman James Gallagher who released a statement that called Trump’s tweet "wholly unacceptable.”Yet, there has been no outrage from our own Congressman. The same man who I have personally witnessed sitting with fire survivors continues to support the rhetoric coming from Washington that hurts our ability to recover. Rep. LaMalfa should be fighting. He should be using every moment, every opportunity to fight for the needs of the people who live right here in CD-1. It is in these moments we show who we truly represent.In order to be effective every one of our elected officials must only be beholden to the people they represent, not corporate interests and not political partisanship. Our Congressman has shown us once again that he is not that kind of representative.A Little Context From HowieIf you like what you read you'd like help Audrey's grassroots campaign, please click ion the thermometer on the right and consider making a $20.20 contribution to her 2020 campaign. CA-01, in the northeast corner of the state, is California's most rural district-- and one of its reddest (R+11 PVI)-- stretching from Grass Valley, Oroville, Chico and Paradise in the south, up through Red Bluff, Redding, Susanville, Lake Shasta and Yreka to the Oregon border in the north and the Nevada bodger in the east. Doug LaMalfa is serving his 4th term in Congress, a garden variety xenophobe, homophobe and NRA poster boy (their 2007 "Legislator of the Year"). A backbencher who reflexively backs whatever Trump wants, he sits on the House Agriculture Committee and, owner of a rice farm, has been, for over a decade, the recipient of the largest amount of money from agricultural subsidies (over $1.7 million) in the history of Congress. He takes massive amounts of money-- bribes-- from corporate PACs, primarily in the AgriBusiness sector, nearly a million dollars since getting too Congress and $275,824 just last year alone.Audrey did better in CA-01 in November than any other Democrat had done since LaMalfa was first elected-- by far. She held the very right-wing Republican down to a 54.9% win number. This cycle, she should do even better.
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