where I really was able to appreciate the skill that is necessary to be in agriculture. It’s the ability to constantly pivot in order to survive. People who work in agriculture are constantly dealing with the hurdles put up by Mother Nature. They’re constantly dealing with the mandates and the restrictions and the new laws that are put in place. They’re constantly dealing with changing markets that are always up in the air. It’s a constant risk-taking attitude that I believe leads to their success. It’s my job to make people appreciate that. The least that I can do as a representative of an agricultural area is to make sure that those risks are worth it. What has been your primary motivation in continuing your fight for your constituency? What keeps me motivated is knowing that I’m in Congress not to fight for a cause, but to fight for my constituents. I’m here to represent and to fight for the values and the people of the Central Coast. My goal and my fight is to ensure that the people of the Central Coast have confidence, knowing that the federal government works for them. I do that in my fights in Washington, D.C., be it on the Agriculture Committee, be it on the Ways
and Means Committee, be it on the Budget Committee, in order to put forward the policies that benefit the people here on the Central Coast. I also do it by providing essential casework to my constituents, being that bridge to Washington, D.C. and back, to make sure that our government bureaucracy actually works for the people here on the Central Coast. What people remember is how their congressmen helped them with a personal issue, an immigration issue, a Social Security issue, an IRS issue, a veterans issue, making sure that the government works for them on a personal issue. To me, that is how you affect their lives and that’s what motivates me. I’m helping them have the confidence that government can actually work for them. You have been recognized as a politician seeking to restore bipartisanship. Why is being able to work on both sides of the aisle important to you? Congress, like both most things, is really about relationships and it really is about the trust that you build from those relationships. I have experienced that firsthand, especially with my work on the
Ag Committee, where we work not to find our differences, but to find our similarities and then work together on that, as we did in the 2018 Farm Bill. We had our differences when it came to the nutrition title of the 2018 Farm Bill, and I fought like heck to make sure that there were no changes to that nutrition title. I know that when it comes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, my district benefits from that and the last thing I wanted to do was to take that from them. At the same time, we also worked together to ensure that there was the appropriate funding and legislation in that farm bill to promote and to protect our specialty crops on the Central Coast. I was able to work with Republicans who were the ones in charge of formulating that farm bill. So much so, that Republican members came up to me and wanted to know what my interests were, how they could help me get my Central Coast interest into the 2018 Farm Bill. To me that’s why relationships are so important. It takes work to be bipartisan. I will never sacrifice the values or the desires of the people of the Central Coast for bipartisanship. But I will ensure that bipartisanship works for the people of the Central Coast. That’s why I’m bipartisan. And I think it works.
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NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2020
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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