Does Valadao represent voters or lobbyists?
Rep. David Valadao has avoided his constituents’ requests for town hall meetings, preferring to arrange individual appointments at his office and carefully moderated telephone conferences, abdicating his responsibility to gather information in a public forum from the people he represents.
If not his constituents’ concerns, then, what does inform the congressman’s vote?
Did $40,000 in campaign contributions from the telecommunications industry result in the congressman’s support for a bill allowing internet service providers to sell a person’s private browsing history? Does that benefit his 700,000 constituents – or AT&T and Comcast?
Insurance and pharmaceutical interests contributed in excess of $150,000 to the congressman’s 2016 campaign. On May 4, he voted to strip over 60,000 of his constituents – including an estimated 14,000 children – of their health care.
The Republican party gave approximately $50,000 to Valadao’s campaign; predictably, he has voted for the Trump agenda 100 percent of the time, including a law allowing employers to give compensatory time instead of pay for overtime work.
Perhaps those people in District 21 who voted against Trump for president believed that Valadao could still honestly consider their interests when he cast his votes in Congress. Apparently we were wrong.
Diane Cross, Selma
This story was originally published May 21, 2017 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Does Valadao represent voters or lobbyists?."