Yvette Herrell should resign
In the name of decency, U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell needs to resign. On Jan. 6, President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani stood before a crowd near the Washington Monument and specifically incited them to march up our National Mall and engage in “trial by combat.” “Be there. Will be wild.” “You’ll never take back our country with weakness” and “show strength” were other phrases thrown out.
The crowd included notable white supremacists, QAnon advocates and scores of people fueled by provably false conspiracy theories. Among them was Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, who has said that African American protesting athletes should go back to Africa and has since pledged that “blood will flow from the building” on Wednesday if democratically elected Joe Biden takes office.
The mob streamed toward the Capitol, breached it and looted it. A Capitol Hill police officer was attacked and has since died. Four others died that day. There are no “whatabouts” or false equivalencies. The only equivalency is the looting of our Capitol in 1814 by foreign soldiers.
The mob’s stated purpose was to prevent our elected legislators from doing their jobs and accepting the duly cast Electoral College votes from each of our states. Historically a ministerial and ceremonial function, they were told by Trump that the election had been stolen. No court agreed.
But Herrell didn’t care. She knew the election was fair; she lawfully won her Southern New Mexico district, as did Trump. Think back to Vice President Al Gore, who lost to George W. Bush. Were such a thing actually a thing, Gore could simply have refused to accept the votes and Bush would have lost. He didn’t, and neither did Vice President Mike Pence.
Knowing all this and with fresh blood still on the floors of our Congress, Herrell went to the floor of the House of Representatives and voted essentially to keep Trump in office. She did so with the full knowledge that he had incited the attack on our Capitol. She could have followed the example of many of her Republican colleagues who, shaken by the attack and loss of life, voted to accept the results of the election. She didn’t.
GOP Sen. Mitt Romney said that, after all of what transpired Jan. 6, those voting to keep Trump in office “will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy.”
By voting to throw out a national election that by every measure was fair, and by voting to keep Trump in office immediately after our Capitol was breached and looted at his hands, Herrell endorsed and ratified his actions. She is complicit. She has since expressed disagreement with the death and destruction incited by Trump, but that didn’t stop her from voting to disenfranchise us and keep him in office. She has attempted to hide behind the excuse that she was simply representing constituents. I know from experience that not all constituent desires should be acted upon. She knows it, too.
Interestingly, we now know that at the president’s direction, National Guard deployment was impeded. Our nation is deeply divided, and our international reputation is in tatters. It will take years to heal us. But we won’t heal as long as people like Yvette Herrell remain in office — she is not who we are. Now shunned by the vast majority of her colleagues, she has rendered herself useless to her district and New Mexico. In the name of decency, Herrell should resign.