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POLITICO: “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is attacking Republican Rep. David Valadao over his position on California’s nuclear power plant.”
Today, POLITICO published a report on Republican David Valadao’s transparent attempt to take credit for critical investments funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that he opposed – and how that hypocrisy will endanger vulnerable incumbents like him in 2024.
Despite the law’s bipartisan support, so-called “moderate” Valadao still didn’t have the backbone to buck the Republican party’s far-right fringes. Instead, he “voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and then celebrated its effects.” Now, as Valadao loses his security blanket in Kevin McCarthy, the representative’s partisan voting record is leaving him more at risk than ever.
POLITICO: Democrats weaponize nuclear power against House GOP
Wes Venteicher | December 12, 2023
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Valadao voted in 2021 against the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocated $6 billion for nuclear power. Then he visited the plant on California’s Central Coast in August, after the law helped prevent its closure, and praised the plant’s role in “lowering costs, creating jobs and strengthening our national security.”
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The Biden White House and Democratic campaigns around the country are leveling similar accusations against dozens of congressional Republicans who voted against federal spending packages and then celebrated projects supported by the spending.
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“After voting to gut the funding that kept this cost-cutting, job-creating, and state-powering energy hub afloat, David Valadao had the nerve to parade around the nuclear plant praising their work and assumed no one would notice,” DCCC spokesperson Dan Gottlieb said in a statement. “Voters have had enough of the hypocritical publicity stunts.”
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Support for nuclear power in California — at least at its existing plant — is now bipartisan as everyone tries to keep the lights on amid the state’s Democrat-driven transition to renewable energy.
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Salas was ahead of the curve: He was the only Democrat in the state Legislature to vote against a 2018 plan to close the plant by 2025. Contrast that with the Legislature’s overwhelming, 100-4 bipartisan vote last year to keep the plant open until 2030 to assuage grid reliability concerns.
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Salas said the plant provides reliable power — and so would he.
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“While I wasn’t afraid to buck my party for the good of the Central Valley on this issue, Valadao could not be bothered to do the same — he says one thing in the district while voting to raise our energy costs in DC,” he said in a statement.
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