Paul Buxman remembers how excited he was to meet his new congressman, Devin Nunes, when Nunes showed up at his organic fruit farm in California’s central valley in the early 2000s.
Buxman assumed that Nunes, who comes from Portuguese dairy farming stock, was actually interested in sustainable land use. Maybe they’d talk about pesticides, or water, or farm labor issues in one of the world’s largest food producing regions. Maybe Nunes would ask Buxman to address the crowd he’d brought along.
None of it happened. “I thought, this is the first farmer we’ve had as a congressman who’s come out to visit a farm,” Buxman. “But all it was was a photo op.”
Buxman never was able to arrange a meeting with Nunes, despite making multiple overtures. Pretty soon, he stopped voting for him. Then, after Donald Trump became president and Nunes, as chair of the House intelligence committee until 2019 emerged as one of Trump’s staunchest defenders, Buxman started leaving messages with the congressman’s staffers. “You have to remember, you don’t only represent people who you agree with. At least, sit quietly and put up with us,” he’d tell them.
Nunes paid no attention until Buxman signed a petition demanding that Nunes stop describing himself as a farmer on the electoral ballot. Nunes’s parents had long ago moved the family dairy farm to Iowa and Nunes himself had no apparent farming connection left other than a small investment in a friend’s Napa valley winery, the petition argued.
Now, Nunes did respond – with a lawsuit, accusing Buxman of being part of a dark-money plot that threatened his good name and the integrity of the electoral process. It was one of a flurry of suits the congressman filed against critics and media organizations after facing heavy criticism for his role in Trump’s various Russia scandals.
Lashing out at his critics in this way has not been without a political cost. Two years ago, after 16 years in Congress, Nunes faced his first significant re-election battle when a local prosecutor, Andrew Janz, came within five percentage points of unseating him. This year, small business owner and civic activist Phil Arballo could come closer still with a campaign that has focused predominantly on the local issues that many constituents accuse Nunes of ignoring.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
