If elected, Issa envisions picking up where he left off — returning to his former committees and focusing on oversight — while his recent moves suggest he will embrace the role of Democratic antagonist. The self-described fierce partisan is party to a lawsuit to stop California from mailing ballots to every voter in the state, has sided with President Trump in his feud with Twitter and labels Democrats the party of perpetual shutdown over the coronavirus pandemic.
Although he has been a politician for much of his career, Issa maintains he is not a career politician.
“Are you a career politician because you’ve done something for a long time or you’re a career politician because of how you come to the office and do the job?” he asked during a recent interview with The Washington Post. “I don’t ever want to be a career politician. I want to always be somebody who is perfectly willing to work with people across the aisle, but also willing to engage in a fight worth fighting. I would say there’s plenty of both of those to be done right now.”
For Issa, leaving Congress wasn’t supposed to be a departure from Washington but a clean break to segue into a job in the Trump administration, leading the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. But the Republican-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee abruptly halted his confirmation hearing last September over Issa’s FBI background check.
Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the top Democrat on the panel, said the review might be “problematic and potentially disqualifying for Senate confirmation.” He did not reveal the nature of the issue, and other committee members who had not seen the FBI report said they, too, wanted time to examine the issue.
Issa said running for the House seat was about staying in public service after the indefinite stall of his nomination. He singled out Menendez for criticism.
“Clearly, I would have continued in some other public service if I’d known that I was going to sit in the waiting room, you know, for almost two years,” he said, adding: “I don’t think there’s a problem with blocking people for publicly statable reasons. But that was never the case. It was always delay, delay, another excuse, another reason.”
Menendez declined to comment. Juan Pachon, spokesman for the senator, said in an email that Menendez “had access to important classified info that he was prevented from sharing. He went to great lengths to find a way to share that information with other senators but was ultimately stonewalled by the (White House).”
Once one of the richest men in Congress with an estimated net worth of $280 million in 2018, Issa has invested about $2.5 million of his own money in his bid, loaned his campaign $3.25 million and raised about $1.4 million in individual contributions, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. His campaign has about $350,000 cash on hand.
Campa-Najjar, 31, who worked in the Labor Department in the Obama administration, said Issa is running for the wrong reasons.
“We’re his backup plan,” Campa-Najjar said. “He wants to work for the administration. . . . And it’s like people tell you, you should not make somebody a priority if they’re making you an option. I refuse to let the people of my district be the backup plan of anybody, let alone somebody who is running, I think, out of vanity.”
Campa-Najjar is a Palestinian Mexican American who had to fend off Hunter’s false claims that he was linked to terrorism before narrowly losing to the then-indicted incumbent. Born in East County, he said that he is a more authentic representative of a district that has grown more diverse.
With a population of about 750,000 and a median household income of around $75,000, the 50th district covers two counties north and east of San Diego, to just west of the Salton Sea. Upscale inland suburbs, alpine backcountry and almost 20 Indian reservations or trust lands sprawl over its almost 2,800 square miles.
As the district’s population has grown, so has its share of minorities — mostly Hispanics. The district was 60 percent white and 28 percent Hispanic in 2012, and 55 percent white and 32 percent Hispanic in 2018, according to census figures.
Campa-Najjar, who has the backing of incumbent Democrats, unions and environmental groups, said his positions don’t fit squarely in either a liberal or a moderate Democrat label. He brought up his gun ownership and complained about being overtaxed in California in a way that “hurts small businesses disproportionately.” He also says he has seen the good and bad of immigration.
“People are saying, how can you be a pro-gun Democrat?” Campa-Najjar said. “How can you be someone who isn’t in the party line? Because I’m an East County Democrat, just like you have West Virginia Democrats. Our values are different.”
Campa-Najjar has raised around $2.3 million, almost all small contributions, with $430,000 cash on hand.
Issa has been campaigning like an incumbent — connecting people to resources in Washington during the coronavirus pandemic, helping them get emergency passports and calling residents “my constituents” in an interview.
Campa-Najjar said the pandemic has taken an economic toll on the district.
“There are people who’ve worked their fingers to the bone for five, 10, 20 years, a lifetime, and in the blink of an eye, two months, all of it’s vanished,” he said. “Issa cannot possibly relate to that kind of complete economic suffering.”
Issa is best known for the House Oversight Committee investigation of the Obama administration and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s handling of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack on U.S. installations in Benghazi, Libya. However, when House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) decided to establish a select House panel to conduct a probe of the attacks, he tapped former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) to lead it, not Issa.
Looking ahead to the general election, Issa has reason to be confident, analysts say.
The district has many more Republican voters than Democrats, said Carl Luna, a political science professor at San Diego Mesa College. As of early May there were 146,631 Republicans, 108,570 Democrats and 87,895 independents, out of a total of 366,431 voters registered.
But that edge has been narrowing. Since 2012, the district has gained almost 50,000 voters — many of them Democrats.
And with the number of independents approaching that of Democrats, Luna said, the challenge for Issa is that these independents are leaning to the left. The upside is that they’re less likely to vote, he said.
Hunter and his father represented the district for some 40 years. Laura Fink, the chief executive of Rebelle Communications, a political strategy firm, said Issa is the favorite, but “if this is a change election and voters are looking for something different, then after two Hunters, they may be willing to take a look at a fresh face.”
Campa-Najjar said he has a message for Issa.
“Enjoy retirement. Somebody else with fresh legs, a fresh perspective, with tenacity and has the ability to push through. I mean, I don’t know what he could do that he could not achieve in 20 years and if he couldn’t, why would you give someone the job again?”
Issa, when a reporter shared Campa-Najjar’s suggestion, laughed out loud.
“I guess he just doesn’t know how young I am. And I’m just nowhere close to passing the baton and retiring,” he said.
