Chuy García’s sordid attempt to subvert democratic conventions has put the party’s self-image to the test. So far, it’s a test Democrats are failing.
If Democrats are the “party of democracy,” as they so often say of themselves, the implication is that Republicans aren’t. That’s been the Democratic Party’s inferable (sometimes explicit) self-conception since at least January 6, 2021, if not earlier. It is a label that Democrats struggle to earn when defending “democracy” conflicts with the demands of partisanship.
Representative Chuy García’s sordid attempt to subvert democratic conventions has put the party’s self-image to the test. So far, it’s a test Democrats are failing.
García announced his intention to retire at the end of his fourth term in office on November 4, Election Day. But his announcement came just hours after the filing deadline to run for his Illinois seat in Congress had elapsed, blocking an open competition to succeed him. As it turns out, though, García’s office had been covertly gathering signatures for his chief of staff, Patty García (no relation), to run for that seat. Her petition was filed just prior to the Monday deadline in what looks like a conspiracy to transfer García’s seat to his hand-picked successor.
When Washington Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez objected to that undemocratic maneuver and sought her colleagues’ consent to condemn it, it resulted in “chaos” among her “shocked and dismayed” Democratic colleagues. To survey the reaction to Gluesenkamp Perez’s gesture in the direction of good governance from the loudest members of her caucus, you’d be forgiven for concluding the villains in this story were those who merely notice García’s misdeed.
Representative Delia Ramirez rushed to the defense of García, “an unwavering fighter for our democracy and our communities.” Indeed, she went so far as to imply that his detractors object only to the existence of “a strong progressive Latino leader,” not his anti-democratic behavior.
“The only resolution about Congressman Chuy García that should be considered by Congress is one to honor and thank him for his many years of excellent public service,” wrote far-left Representative Greg Casar. The representative, who seems preternaturally capable of identifying threats to democracy in even the most banal Republican initiatives, appears theatrically perplexed by the disenfranchisement of García’s Democratic constituents.
“This Democratic intraparty fighting is not what any of us want, and it’s not what the American people deserve,” California Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove complained amid her objections to Gluesenkamp Perez’s expressions of her addled conscience. Even the party’s grey beards are squirming. “If we voted every day on if we didn’t like something a member did,” mused onetime Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, “I think we would be voting every day on only that.”
García himself is unrepentant. In fact, he seems inclined to blame those who have chafed over his conduct for not figuring out what his office was doing sooner. “I kept looking at my phone every little while [during the weekend], because I expected calls from mayors, trustees, political operatives, or just some of our super voters to see if everything was OK, or if Patty Garcia had gone rogue or something, or we had had a falling-out,” García confessed to a Chicago Sun-Times reporter. “Not one call.”
The level of contempt for the voters who have the gall to object to their own sidelining is exquisite. It puts the lie to the notion that the Democratic Party’s leading lights were ever especially enamored with preserving the integrity of the vote. That’s not much of a revelation for the party’s critics. But among the rank-and-file Democrats who bought their party’s hype, those who are sincerely anxious about the state of democracy in America, this must be a wake-up call. Or, at least, it should be.