Cuellar rally defined by what was left unsaid
No names were mentioned. None of the speakers who held court in the courtyard of Smoke BBQ+SKYBAR for Wednesday evening’s get-out-thevote rally on behalf of Congressman Henry Cuellar acknowledged that Cuellar actually has an opponent in the May 24 Democratic runoff.
If you hadn’t been keeping up, you wouldn’t know that the nine-term Laredo lawmaker — whose district includes a big chunk of San Antonio’s East Side and a sliver of downtown — is facing a rematch with progressive young immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros, who came out of nowhere in 2020 to nearly knock him off.
Without acknowledging Cisneros’ existence, the roster of speakers — headlined by Cuellar and Jim Clyburn, D-south Carolina, the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House — made persistent, unmistakable judgments on the choice being presented to Democratic voters.
A workhorse vs. a showhorse. Someone who’s all action vs. someone who’s all talk. A diplomatic, well-mannered legislative strategist vs. a confrontational left-wing purist.
Time and again, the audience of nearly 100 veteran party members were told that Cuellar has the juice on Capitol Hill, that his experience and personal connections can’t be replaced.
Clyburn, the man who lifted Joe Biden out of the presidential-primary doldrums two years ago with a crucial endorsement, championed Cuellar as a “good friend” who is one of the 10 “deputy chief whips” enlisted by Clyburn to get bills across the finish line.
The rally had been planned well before Monday’s blockbuster leak of a draft opinion from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito indicating that SCOTUS plans to overturn abortion rights in this country.
But a celebratory gathering for the lone House Democrat who voted only eight months ago against a landmark abortion-rights bill (the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021) couldn’t help but feel weird and awkward under the circumstances.
Like the name of Cuellar’s opponent, the word “abortion” was conspicuous in its absence at the rally. The only hint of it came near the end from Texas House hopeful Josey Garcia, who promised to “fight for your reproductive rights,” and seemed to sense that she had brought up a touchy issue.
The questions about Cuellar’s Democratic bona fides are at least as old as his 2001 appointment to the Texas secretary of state’s office by Republican Gov. Rick Perry. The questions go beyond the issue of reproductive rights.
While Cuellar has stood with his party on some key pieces of legislation, such as the 2010 Affordable Care Act and last year’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, he has irritated progressives by opposing green-energy initiatives, taking money from private prisons, voting against financial regulatory reform and assuming a hawkish stance on border issues.
Clyburn had an answer for those critics.
“People tell you that you’ve got to agree on everything. I don’t agree with Henry Cuellar on everything,” Clyburn said.
“My goodness, I was married to the same woman for 58 years. We did not agree on everything.
In fact, we did not agree on a lot of things.”
Clyburn recounted a piece of advice his father gave him just before he headed out to college: “The first sign of a good education is good manners.”
The implication was that Cuellar’s knack for political compromise was a sign of good manners, while Cisneros’ uncompromising idealism demonstrated bad manners.
Cuellar furthered the point by hinting that Cisneros, if elected, would become the seventh member of The Squad, the new-generation ultra-progressive group led by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-cortez.
All six members of The Squad voted last November against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, because they were denied concrete assurances that the more ambitious Build Back Better bill would also reach the president’s desk.
An animated Cuellar, standing onstage in rolled-up shirtsleeves, cited that moment Wednesday, although he got the number wrong when he stated that “five of our colleagues” voted against the infrastructure package.
“I’m not going to mention any names, but they’re on TV very frequently,” Cuellar added.
If those publicity-seeking purists had their way, Cuellar said, Texas would have been denied $35 billion in funding for roads, bridges, water projects, public transit, etc.
Wednesday’s celebration of Cuellar provided no mention of the fact that the congressman has a murky legal cloud over his head. In January, FBI agents raided his home and campaign office. But it was the kind of day where elephants in the courtyard were ignored.