Democrats in congressional runoff races across Texas have talked about issues they’d want to handle if elected to Congress, from health care to the economy — but what do they think about voting to impeach U.S. President Donald Trump?
One sitting Texas Congressman — U.S. Rep. Al Green of Houston — has been the most vocal about impeachment and introduced the now-defunct articles of impeachment against Trump in December. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Dallas Morning News last week that she wished Green hadn’t made impeaching Trump an issue in the U.S. House of Representatives.
According to Green, Trump’s statements on several national controversies had "incited bigotry" against various minority groups, along with Trump’s failure to condemn a deadly white supremacist rally in August, were grounds for impeachment. Other Democrats have said the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller — who is looking into whether Trump’s presidential campaign had any connection to Russian meddling in the 2016 election — could be grounds for impeachment, depending on the final evidence.
On Monday, Green fired back at Pelosi.
"It is regrettable that Leader Pelosi would trivialize President Trump's hateful discrimination against Jews, Latinos, Blacks, Women, and the LGBTQ community by reducing the President's harmful bigotry to his ‘being a jerk,’'' Green said in a statement. ‘‘Love for my country will not permit me to allow the President's bigotry to be trivialized and minimized."
The Texas Tribune reached out to the 22 Democrats in congressional runoff races and asked how how they would vote if a Trump impeachment were at stake.
Out of the 22 candidates surveyed, 14 responded and eight did not. Responses from two of the candidates, Lillian Salerno and Colin Allred of Congressional District 32 in Dallas, came during a Dallas Democratic Forum runoff debate moderated by Texas Tribune reporter Brandon Formby.
When it comes to the impeachment of the president, the message varies among Democrats running for Congress. Some candidates told The Texas Tribune they were convinced that there was enough evidence to impeach the president. However, most Democrats surveyed weren't so quick to say “yes” to an impeachment — many wanted to wait to weigh the evidence from the Mueller investigation before deciding.