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This fiscal cliff vote that happened on New Year’s Day — who the heck was representing the Imperial Valley? With Bob Filner gone, where was Juan Vargas? Didn’t he win the election to fill the seat? Can an entire district go without representation like that? — Annoyed, El Centro
Yes, a district can go without representation. But it isn’t preferable and will eventually lead to a replacement.
This is a great question, because some of our readers might not realize that we were without a 51st Congressional District representative from Dec. 3 until Thursday morning, and arguably longer.
That means we were without a congressman during the contentious fiscal cliff vote by the House of Representatives late Tuesday night.
The Senate passed its end of the bill to avert a fiscal crisis shortly after midnight Tuesday.
Longtime Democratic Congressman Bob Filner resigned as the 51st representative Dec. 3 to be sworn in as San Diego mayor. Really, he all but abdicated his congressional responsibilities a few months earlier as campaigning for the San Diego mayoral race was particularly nasty this year.
His successor and longtime adversary-cum-ally, Democrat Juan Vargas, won election to Filner’s seat. But Vargas did not take his seat until Thursday, when the 113th session of Congress was sworn in at the House of Representatives in D.C.
We shouldn’t feel too bad. We were one of three U.S. congressional districts that were vacant at the time of the vote. The other two were California’s 18th District in the northern San Joaquin Valley and Illinois’ 2nd District in southeastern and part of Southside Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Unfortunately we get classified among a trio of vacant districts left empty for odd reasons.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza left California’s 18th District, according to media speculation, because he wasn’t happy with the altered makeup of his constituency following redistricting. Publically, we wanted to spend more time with family.
Chicago’s 2nd District was left empty by a slightly more famous face in Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who said he resigned last year for mental and physical health issues. However, he is currently the subject of two separate investigations by the House Ethics Committee and the FBI.
Obviously not having a vote or three votes for that matter did not affect anything. All three vacate districts were held by Democrats, who presumably would have voted for the deal, which passed 257-167.
Now, while our congressional seat has been filled, we are left without a state senator, as Vargas was elected to the 40th District of the California Senate back in 2010. We’re still waiting to hear when a special election will be set. Nothing could be done until Vargas officially resigned from the state Senate.
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