New president sets uncertain course
Power shift: Coast yields to rural areas
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two politically powerful Californians who have gotten to know Donald Trump say liberals shouldn’t fear him. They promise that Trump behaves a lot differently than the bullying, blustery presence he cuts when he’s before the public.
“He’s really a nice guy when you’re with him,” said Rep. Devin Nunes, the
Tulare Republican who is a member of Trump’s transition team and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committe on Intelligence. “He’s very inquisitive. He really works very hard.”
“He’s very intuitive. He listens. He asks lot of questions. He listens to opinions of people who he doesn’t agree with,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, the second highest-ranking Republican in the House. “People have a misimpression of him. They shouldn’t be fearful about him.”
Regardless, many progressive Californians remain dubious. When Trump takes office Friday, the GOP will control the presidency and both houses of Congress. That means California’s locus of power will shift a bit away from its wealthier, more liberal coastal areas to its less-wealthy more rural inland counties. Nunes and McCarthy, both from the Central Valley, will be key gatekeepers to the Trump administration.
Under Trump, “rural America is going to have a strong voice,” Nunes said.
Their positions on issues such as trade, immigration, water use and the Affordable Care Act differ from those of coastal liberals. And in some cases their views are different even from Trump’s.
After the anticipated flurry of activity in “Trump’s first 100 hours or 100 days, there will be few avenues for Californians to connect with Washington. And one of the main ones is through Kevin McCarthy,” said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
The shift in power has caused some Silicon Valley leaders to change their thinking. If Hillary Clinton had been elected, immigration reform would have been a top priority for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a public policy and trade organization that represents 400 top companies in the tech capital. But there is little hope of that happening now.
“Now the opportunities are more in comprehensive tax reform, and perhaps infrastructure investment,” said Carl Guardino, president of the group. “We need to align to the areas where the current seems to flowing.”
Nunes will remain in the spotlight for as long as Trump and the intelligence community continue to snipe at each other over Russian-directed hacks during the presidential campaign.
That perch also means that “Nunes is now between a rock and a hard place,” said Thomas Holyoke, a professor of political science at Cal State Fresno.
“He’s trying to be supportive of (Trump) and not do anything to stain the legitimacy of the Trump presidency,” Holyoke continued. “But he also has an oversight role to serve as chair of the Intelligence Committee. That’s a potential conflict of interest, and he’s got to figure out a way to navigate around it.”
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