North Bay lawmakers reflect on state of democracy on the anniversary of deadly riot at US Capitol

Rep. Mike Thompson is a combat veteran who was seriously wounded in the Vietnam War. Representing the North Bay and North Coast, he has served nine terms as a congressman — governing across nearly two decades of tumultuous American history.

But taking stock of all that experience, back to his days as an Army paratrooper, it was the long, gut-twisting hours of one shocking, bloody day a year ago that Thompson said marks “probably the most troubling time in my lifetime.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, Thompson, D-Napa, was sheltered in the Longworth House Office Building with staff and colleagues, watching on screens as rioters whipped up by then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol, the seat of American representative government, in an insurrection that left five people dead.

“These were folks who were attacking the Capitol for the sole purpose of taking away Americans’ right to vote,” Thompson, 70, recalled in a Wednesday telephone interview. “They were trying their best to overturn the results of a duly held election. It doesn’t get any more serious than that.”

Free elections and peaceful transfers of power are “what I fought for in Vietnam,” Thompson said. “This was what colleagues of mine died for.”

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, took shelter in the same building that day as the insurrection jolted the capital and scarred the nation. The memory of the day remains “surreal,” he said.

“Many of us began the day pretty sanguine about how fortified the Capitol was,” he recalled. “We expected some political theater from Trump supporters and nothing more. Over the course of several hours that just gave way to this very unsettling reality that this was real violence. It was a real insurrection. It was directed by the president and it was a real threat to not just our safety but our democracy.”

Death threats poured in against members of Congress in the days after Jan. 6, and Huffman said some were specific enough that he moved his family out of their Marin County home for several weeks.

“It was just a very ominous moment,” he said.

A year later, worrying signs abound that the nation has done little to heal the fissures, or combat the extremism, that drove thousands of Americans from across the nation to descend on Washington, D.C., and vilify an election Trump said was rigged and stolen, but where no substantive fraud has been proven.

Investigators have estimated that as many as 2,000 people entered the Capitol, and many turned to violence, injuring up to 140 police officers and killing one who tried to stop them. Four people identified as riot participants also died Jan. 6.

Trump’s allies and other right-wing actors have since sought to sow doubt about what happened that day. A year later, 1 in 4 Americans believe those involved in the riot were “protecting democracy,” a poll published this week by news organization ABC and research firm Ipsos found.

Nearly three-quarters of Republicans still believe Trump won the 2020 election, according to the same poll, even as the investigations and court findings finding no evidence of voting fraud pile up.

Thompson pointed to a bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6 events as key for the country to move forward.

“We need to find out what went wrong here and who was responsible for what happened, and that needs to be sorted out so it doesn’t happen again,” he said. The committee has been at work for six months and, according to news reports, intends to begin publishing its findings soon.

Huffman agreed. He hoped the committee would provide insight into the failure by the U.S. Capitol Police Department, not to mention the National Guard and the world’s largest military and intelligence establishment, to stop rioters from storming the building. Huffman called that failure the “other very unsettling piece of this,” and said it had exposed disturbing sympathies between law enforcement and the pro-Trump rioters.

“We saw really heroic actions by some Capitol police officers, but we also saw a really strange level of deference,” he said. “We saw signs of sympathy if not support.”

Huffman again blamed Trump, who he said had spent his presidency trying to villainize Democratic politicians in the eyes of the military and law enforcement as “part of his authoritarian agenda.” Since Jan. 6, the more than 2,000-person-strong Capitol police force has seen changes in leadership, but Huffman called for further reforms.

“It’s part of the change that is going to be needed to prevent this from ever happening again,” Huffman said. “No one based on their stoking of culture wars or anything else political should be able to curry special treatment or favor from law enforcement or the military in situations like this.”

Republican opposition to the Jan. 6 House panel has slowed reforms, and accountability, Thompson and Huffman said.

Most of their Republican colleagues opposed the creation of the investigatory committee. While Thompson said “the culprits” of the Jan. 6 riots should be held responsible, he also conceded that full accountability could be difficult in the face of Republican lawmakers still fiercely loyal to Trump.

Those lawmakers, including Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield congressman who leads House Republicans, have sought to divert efforts to connect the bloody riots to the lies spread by Trump and many of his surrogates in the weeks between the November 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021.

“It’s going to be tough, there’s no question about that,” Thompson said.

Huffman’s faith in bipartisanship is suffering, he said.

“I hate this. I hate to say this, but in the last few years the pursuit of bipartisanship has become somewhat naive and misguided because one party not only doesn’t want it, they punish it.”

He cited the backlash the handful of Republicans who backed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill have faced from their own party.

Huffman, a progressive Democrat who represents a deep blue coastal district stretching from the Golden Gate to the Oregon border, questioned his ability — or duty — to reach Americans who continue to believe the election was rigged or stolen.

“These people have been manipulated into believing these lies,” he said. “Some very influential messengers have done it, from a former president with a huge megaphone to an entire news network and a bunch of platforms on social media.”

Huffman looked instead, he said, to the Republicans who did not believe the election was stolen. “That can make the difference,” he said. “We are going to have to work to keep this country on the rails, but we can do it. We have a chance.”

That chance, he said, was by Democrats showing they should hold power until Republicans pass through the “weird hypnosis” of the Trump era.

“The American people are going to reward a party that tells the truth, governs responsibly and tries to be responsive to their needs,” he said. If voters reward Democrats, “Republicans will come around,” he said, “and we will have a functional Republican party again and we need that.”

But Democrats’ agenda in Congress has stalled in recent weeks, as Senate moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, block passage of major policy proposals from President Joe Biden.

Thompson, whose North Bay district swings inland from Sonoma and Napa counties to pick up more conservative voters in Lake, Solano and Yolo counties, belongs to the centrist Democrats’ Blue Dog Coalition and prides himself on his bipartisanship. Despite political division, widespread consumption of misinformation particularly among right-leaning voters and the sway Trump holds over the Republican party, he said it remained imperative to keep lines open to the other side.

“I just don’t think we can ignore folks,” he said.

“I don’t have to be (bipartisan),” Thompson added. “I could be a bomb thrower and probably still get by.”

But, he said, “the institution of representative government is really important, and it’s what makes us different from other countries. ... We should do everything we can to make our system work. And it takes a lot to make it work.”

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88.