‘I’m not very hopeful right now.’ Jackie Speier on why she’s leaving Congress next year

Rep. Jackie Speier was appalled but hardly shocked Wednesday as she watched House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a man she thought she knew and had once worked with at the Capitol in Sacramento, rationalize violence on the once-hallowed House floor.

McCarthy’s argument that Arizona Republican Paul Gosar should not be censured for posting an anime video of him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is reflective of a toxic culture in Washington.

Certainly, that played a role in Speier’s decision that she will be done with Congress after her term expires next year.

Speier intimately understands how violent rhetoric can precede political violence. And it was Speier who introduced the motion to censure Gosar in what has been a momentous week in her life.

On Tuesday, Speier announced she would not seek re-election to the Peninsula congressional seat she has held since 2008. Thursday marked the 43rd anniversary of when Speier, then a young aide to Rep. Leo Ryan, was left for dead on a jungle airstrip in Guyana, and Ryan was assassinated by members of the People’s Temple cult. Ryan was investigating claims that cult members were being held against their will. Soon after, more than 900 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones committed mass suicide.

Whenever politicians quit at the top of their game, insiders are surprised and immediately speculate about what it means. Speier had choice assignments on the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees. Her Hillsborough district is safely Democratic.

She worries her party will lose the House majority in 2022, but she’s been through that before. At 71, Speier decided to “come home to California” at the end of her term after 13 years of cross-country flights to Washington and 18 years in the Legislature, where I covered her.

Speier says she wants to be more “than a weekend wife” and spend more time with her adult children.

And then there’s the matter of the toxicity in Washington.

The episode on the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday was one more reason why she doesn’t regret her decision. For the rest of us, it was more evidence of how damaged our democracy has become.

In the Gosar video, blood gushes from Ocasio-Cortez’s neck. Gosar dismissed it as a joke, offered no apology and gave a convoluted explanation: “There is no threat in the cartoon other than the threat that immigration poses to our country.”

Speier saw the video for what it is: an incitement to violence directed at a member of Congress, one who is a woman of color, and a warning to other women about what’s in store for them if they dare run for office. If Gosar’s “cartoon” was not worthy of censure, she asked, what is?

“I am a victim of violence,” Speier said. “I know what it is like.”

McCarthy took to the House floor to defend Gosar, and cited inflammatory comments by Democratic members, though none of them suggested killing fellow Republicans.

McCarthy criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi for being partisan, talked about President Joe Biden’s failings, inflation, the Southern border, impeachment, the supply chain, Afghanistan and the discredited Steele dossier, concluding his flow of consciousness by warning that when Republicans take over, there will be retribution: “A new standard will continue to be applied in the future.”

“Wow,” Speier said. What had become of McCarthy? She had known him from the Legislature, when he was a go-along Republican leader from Bakersfield with a ready smile and a willingness to compromise with Democrats.

Now, McCarthy contorts himself to defend the likes of Gosar so that he might win the votes of the Republican conference’s extremists to become speaker if Republicans retake the House in 2022.

“It has become a blood sport,” Speier said.

So it was on Jan. 6, when seditionists egged on by former President Donald Trump breached the Capitol, some of them carrying Confederate flags and hurling racist epithets, and injured 140 police officers.

Speier’s mind had flashed back to Nov. 18, 1978.

Ryan had led a delegation to Guyana to investigate conditions at Jonestown, the compound run by People’s Temple cult leader Jim Jones. Jones directed a follower to slaughter Ryan and his entourage and exhorted more than 900 of his followers to ingest a cyanide-laced drink in a mass murder-suicide. Speier was shot five times. Two bullets remain in her.

Speier was sprawled face-down in the gallery above the House floor when she heard a Capitol police officer’s gunshot. She recalls thinking: “I’m actually going to lose my life in the House of Representatives when I survived in the jungle of Guyana.”

Once the chamber was cleared, McCarthy, in a moment of clarity, correctly declared that Trump “bears responsibility” for inflaming the rioters. He soon thought better of that position, knowing he needs Trump’s help if he is to attain his ambition of becoming speaker. With a few notable exceptions, House Republicans are following a similar script.

“It’s as if they all drank the Kool-Aid,” Speier said.

On Wednesday, Gosar became the 24th member of Congress to be censured when Speier’s resolution passed 223-207-1. Every Democrat, plus two Republicans — Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — voted for it. One Republican abstained.

How different it is from Sacramento. Here, Speier was part of a bipartisan group of legislators who drove Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush from office in 2000 after showing he misused his office. Here, legislation she championed to protect privacy and public health led to national changes.

But she has no prescription for the sickness afflicting Washington.

“I’m not very hopeful right now,” Speier said. “It’s not about legislating, it’s about winning so you have the power.”

For Speier, one remedy is to come home. When you think about why Speier is stepping aside, it’s no surprise at all.

This story was originally published November 18, 2021 at 12:22 PM.