Huffman, Jeffries delight crowd at Petaluma hootenanny

Country music, plentiful food and beer and left-leaning political rhetoric delighted a capacity crowd Monday night at Rep. Jared Huffman’s ninth annual hootenanny, featuring the North Coast congressman at the microphone with a speech and then a guitar in hand.

The environment, climate crisis, the big blue wave that gave Democrats control of the House of Representatives and the need to corral an “out of control” President Donald Trump were touch points in remarks by Huffman and his guest, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York City.

The crowd of Huffman donors who filled the outdoor courtyard at Lagunitas Beer Garden in Petaluma applauded every declaration.

“This is my first hootenanny,” Jeffries said. “Not too many hootenannies in Brooklyn.”

Not well known outside the Beltway that rings the nation’s capital, Jeffries, 48, is a hot commodity on Capitol Hill, where he was elected chairman of the House Democratic Caucus in November. Elected to Congress along with Huffman in 2012, Jeffries beat Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who has served since 1998, for the job as their party’s fifth-ranking member.

The former corporate lawyer came to public attention in January with his speech nominating San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi as House speaker.

“Let me be clear, House Democrats are down with NDP,” he said, seemingly referencing the 1990s hip-hop group Naughty By Nature.

Huffman, a former environmental lawyer, called Jeffries a friend and “one of the most dynamic and talented people that I’ve served with.”

Returning the compliment, Jeffries called Huffman “a leader on confronting the environmental crisis that we have in the United States of America. No one speaks with more authority in Congress right now than Jared Huffman on this issue.”

Huffman, 55, opened his remarks by noting the hootenanny, his biggest campaign event of the year, was coinciding for the first time with Earth Day, an event that started in 1970 at what he called “a pretty dark time” with the Santa Barbara oil spill, a burning river in Ohio and parts of the Great Lakes declared dead.

The environmental movement fostered by Earth Day led to the passage of “all of our bedrock environmental laws,” Huffman said. “Perhaps the spirit of Earth Day points the way forward for these dark times we find ourselves in now.”

Thanking his supporters for his November election victory with 77% of the vote, Huffman said it “helped us produce this incredible big blue wave that brought us victories all over the country,” including seven new Democratic House seats in California.

Earlier Monday, Huffman tweeted that it was “time for the House Judiciary Committee to open impeachment inquiry” into Trump, citing four reasons, including obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

Not all House Democrats are ready to use the word impeachment yet, Huffman said at his event, but “almost all of them are acknowledging impeachment is on the table.”

Trump has continued his “no collusion, no obstruction” retort, asserting he is unimpeachable.

“It was the Democrats that committed the crimes, not your Republican President! Tables are finally turning on the Witch Hunt!” he tweeted Monday.

Jeffries, a Judiciary Committee member, said Congress “has a constitutional responsibility to serve as the check and balance on an out of control executive branch, and Donald Trump is totally out of control.”