Houston congresswoman will play role in impeachment trial
WASHINGTON — Sylvia Garcia’s second year in Congress is, as she put it, “off to a hell of a start.”
The Houston Democrat serving her first term in Washington will be among a group of seven representatives making the case to the Senate that President Donald Trump should be removed from office.
It’s a big stage for the 69-yearold Texas native, who is new to Congress but has hit several rungs of the political ladder in Texas, serving as a municipal judge, county commissioner and state senator. It marks a new high point in that long career and an early sign of the clout Garcia has gained in her short time in Washington, where she’s mostly focused on civil rights, immigration and voting access issues.
Garcia told Hearst Newspapers that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who announced the team of socalled impeachment managers on Wednesday, asked her to join the team the night before, during a short call that Garcia said “needs to be kept between me and Nancy.” The team includes the chairmen of the House intelligence and judiciary committees that oversaw the impeachment process in the House.
“It feels sort of a mix of awesome and somber and kind of sad,” Garcia said. “When you think about it, this is prosecuting the president of the United States. It’s a defense of the Constitution, it’s a defense of democracy.”
Taking the job will almost certainly make her a target for Republicans, though she holds a solidly blue district in Houston where she won 75 percent of the vote in 2018. The Trump campaign was swift to rebuke Garcia.
“Sylvia Garcia and House Democrats
are desperate to undermine a duly elected president because they know they cannot beat him at the ballot box,” Samantha Cotten, a campaign spokeswoman said. “Texans will remember this baseless, partisan witch hunt and vote to re-elect President Trump in November.”
Garcia, an attorney, said the appointment is not something she sought out, but it also wasn’t “shocking.” She said she believes she was picked because of her experience in the courtroom.
Pelosi seemed to confirm that when she announced the team: “The emphasis is on litigators. The emphasis is on comfort level in the courtroom,” she said.
Garcia, who shares with Rep. Veronica Escobar of El Paso the distinction of being the first Texas Latinas ever elected to Congress, is a member of the judiciary committee that wrote the articles of impeachment accusing Trump of abusing his power by withholding military aide to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden and of obstructing Congress.
The House on Wednesday sent the articles of impeachment to the Senate, where a trial is expected to begin in the coming days.
“She’s prepared her entire career for this responsibility,” said state Sen. John Whitmire, a fellow Houston Democrat.
It remains to be seen how the impeachment team will work together and what Garcia’s role will be. She said she doesn’t yet know what approach they will take in making the case that the Gopcontrolled Senate should oust a Republican president.
She said it’s “encouraging” that a handful of Republican senators have signaled they’d be open to calling witnesses — something that Republican leaders in the Senate have resisted — “and having what I would call a real trial.”
Garcia has been slower to support impeachment than some of her Democratic colleagues, including U.S. Rep. Al Green, another Houstonian, who three times tried to impeach Trump over what he calls Trump’s “bigotry.”
“I said all along I did not come here to impeach the president,” Garcia said. “Certainly I didn’t come here seeking to be a manager. I’m honored to do it.”