Why did some Democrats skip this week’s sit-in on the chamber floor? The reasons run the gamut.
While the Democrats were overwhelmingly united in their remarkable 25-hour protest of congressional inaction on gun reform, not everyone participated. And the no-shows were absent for a range of reasons, only a handful of which were related to either the protest itself or the legislation it was designed to move. They included illness, family tragedy, travel and legal trouble.
{mosads}At least one absentee member cited a reluctance to broach House decorum. Another skipped the protest over his outright opposition to the legislation being pushed.
Rep. Sanford Bishop (Ga.), a gun-owning Blue Dog Democrat, said that while he thinks firearms should be subject to “reasonable regulation” for sake of public safety, the proposals championed by his fellow Democrats went too far.
“[R]egulation of firearms and individual gun ownership or use must be consistent with civil liberties such as due process, equal protection, freedom from unlawful searches, and privacy,” Bishop said in a statement. “Unfortunately, none of the measures [House Democrats were pushing] … would adequately do that.”
Pinning down the precise tally of the sit-in participants is an inexact science, as members were constantly shuffling in and out of the House chamber over the course of the daylong event. But the office of House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) put the number of House Democrats at 179, meaning fewer than a dozen Democrats did not play a role at some point of the protest.
Rep. Chaka Fattah would, no doubt, have liked to participate. But the Pennsylvania Democrat was convicted on more than 20 corruption-related charges on Tuesday, just a day before the sit-in launched, and it’s unclear if he has returned to Washington at all since then. Fattah skipped all votes on Tuesday and Wednesday –– and on Thursday he resigned from Congress.
Rep. Tim Walz (Minn.), another Democrat who almost certainly would have participated, is back in his district tending a family tragedy. Walz’s brother, Craig, was killed Sunday by a tree toppled by violent storms that hit the northern Minnesota wilderness area where he was camping with his son.
Rep. Mark Takai (Hawaii) is battling cancer at home.
Rep. Loretta Sanchez had a more pleasant reason to miss the protest. The California Democrat, who’s running for the Senate seat being vacated by outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer, was “traveling back from a trade mission abroad that she led in Ourense, Galicia, Spain,” according to her office.
Rep. Brad Ashford (Neb.), another Blue Dog, supports both bills, but objected to the Democrats’ rule-breaking tactics.
“He does not support either Party shutting down Congress on any issue,” Ashford’s spokesman said Friday in an email.
Other no-shows were more enigmatic.
Rep. Filemon Vela said he backs both of “the Republican-authored bipartisan bills that inspired the sit-in.” But the Texas Blue Dog didn’t participate, he said, out of concern that unnamed other Democrats were preparing to expand their protest beyond the gun reforms that were the central focus.
“I understand and respect the passion of other members of Congress who did participate in the sit-in, but I wasn’t sure that the sit-in was going to be confined to the no fly bill,” Vela said in an email.
His office declined to specify what other issues he feared would be broached.
Rep. Gene Green, another Texas Democrat who declined to join the protest, was similarly cryptic. Green said he also supports both the gun reforms and “the members right to sit in,” and a spokesman sent a list of reforms Green has championed. But he didn’t clarify why Green steered clear of the sit-in.
He might get another chance.
Looking ahead, Democratic leaders are vowing to continue pressing the Republicans for votes on tougher gun laws when the House returns from the Independence Day recess on July 5. Another sit-in, they’ve said, is an option as they weigh which strategies will make the biggest splash.
“We’re going to look at a whole range of tactics,” said Rep. David Cicilline (R.I.), who was among the initial organizers of the protest. “Including that.”