Nevada lawmakers won’t join growing inauguration boycott by House Democrats
WASHINGTON — Last week Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., made news when she announced she would not attend President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Friday inauguration. Lee explained that she did not want to celebrate or honor “an incoming president who rode racism, sexism, xenophobia and bigotry to the White House.”
Later Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., joined the boycott. Trump turned to Twitter to spar with the civil rights icon — which further fanned the flames of discord.
On Wednesday, the number of House Democrats who said they will boycott the inauguration approached 60, which doesn’t include any from Nevada. More than one in four of House Democrats plans to skip the event.
At his final news conference, President Obama refused to comment when a reporter asked him about the House Democrats’ boycott. “All I know is I’m going to be there. So is Michelle,” Obama told reporters.
“These are extraordinary times. Lawmakers go to State of the Unions and inaugurations for presidents that they cannot stand,” said Marc Sandalow, a political analyst with the University of California’s Washington program. They say “they’re doing it for the office of the presidency, and not the person.”
With a huge swath of House Democrats saying they will sit out Trump’s oath of office, Sandalow sees “an an ugly step down the path of decaying Washington. … This is very disrespectful to not only Donald Trump, but to Washington protocol and the peaceful transfer of power,” even if “in their minds it is a reflection of what Trump has started.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, reflected that view when he wrote that he decided to pass on the ceremony because he believes Trump “has shown an utter lack of respect for so many Americans.”
For his part, Lewis announced he would boycott Trump’s inauguration because he believed Russian hacks had damaged Hillary Clinton at the polls. Therefore, Lewis said, Trump is not “a legitimate president.”
In his usual fashion, Trump responded with a counterpunch. The president-elect tweeted that Lewis “should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart — (not to mention crime-infested).” Some African-Americans objected to Trump’s description of Lewis’ congressional district as an urban hellhole. Given that Lewis’ district has a “thriving economic hub in Atlanta,” PolitiFact rated Trump’s statement “mostly false.”
Next Lewis wilted under fact-finders’ scrutiny. The Georgia Congressman, a veteran of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday” March, told “Meet the Press” that Trump’s swearing in would be the first inauguration he would miss since taking office. The National Review found a Washington Post story that reported Lewis, who has served in the House for three decades, skipped the 2001 inauguration of President George W. Bush because he did not believe Bush was “the true-elected” president. PolitiFact rated Lewis’ claim with its worst falsehood category — “pants on fire.”
The inauguration boycott has left an imprint on the House of Representatives, but it has skipped the U.S. Senate, as well as Nevada’s House delegation. Political analyst Geoffrey Skelley of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics posited that Senators have to represent entire states, while the House members who joined the boycott came from heavily Democratic congressional districts. (On average, boycotters’ districts supported Hillary Clinton with 72 percent of the vote, as opposed to 64 percent of the vote in the average Democratic caucus district.)
“There’s no political downside,” Skelley noted, for boycotting House Democrats as they “have a lot of angry Democrats in their district.”
Not so Nevada, where Clinton won the state’s six electoral votes, but Trump came within 27,202 votes of her state tally. All three Nevada House Democrats — Reps. Dina Titus, Jacky Rosen and Ruben Kihuen – plan to attend the inauguration. A former University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor, Titus said in a statement she will attend “to promote our democratic institutions, respect the peaceful transition of power, and pay homage to the rule of law.” She’ll also be there “to hold Trump accountable.”
Kihuen said Wednesday that he won’t be joining fellow Democrats in a boycott of the inauguration. But no one should mistake his presence as a show of support for Trump or his politics.
Kihuen said he doesn’t agree with the president-elect about much of anything, and he was personally offended when Trump criticized Rep. John Lewis, made sexually aggressive remarks about women and characterized immigrants like him as rapists and drug traffickers.
“I’m attending not because I respect Donald Trump but because I respect the office of the president,” he said.
The Nevada delegation’s lone House Republican, Mark Amodei, also plans to watch Trump’s inaugural moment. On The Dan Mason Show Tuesday, Amodei, an ardent Trump supporter, reminded boycotters that scolding Trump helped the Republican nominee in November.
He’s also not sure what boycotters expect to achieve. “You’re not showing up to punish him for what?” Amodei scoffed. “Winning?”
Staff Writer Henry Brean contributed.
Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@r
eviewjournal.com or at 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.
