Associated Press
YAKIMA — Most of the Republican county leaders in U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse’s congressional district on Monday called for the lawmaker to resign for being one of 10 GOP members of the House to vote for the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
Six county GOP chairs from the 4th Congressional District, which covers the central portion of Washington state, called for Newhouse to resign.
“It is impossible to defend the indefensible,” said a letter to Newhouse dated Monday and signed by the GOP chairs of Yakima, Benton, Franklin, Grant, Adams and Douglas counties. “An overwhelming majority of our county constituents are calling for your resignation.”
“When a representative fails to represent the people, the people must respond,” the letter said, adding many constituents feel “betrayed” by Newhouse’s Jan. 13 vote.
A message left at Newhouse’s Washington, D.C. office was not immediately returned.
In justifying his vote, Newhouse has pointed to Trump’s role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his refusal to calm the situation as a mob swarmed the building.
Newhouse, 65, has represented the region since 2015, and was reelected with 66% of the vote in November. The conservative district has a large agricultural base and runs from Canada to the Oregon state line.
Trump won the district with nearly 58% of the vote in the November election — his highest support in any Washington congressional district.
Newhouse has a long pedigree in Republican politics. His father, Irv Newhouse, served more than three decades in the state Legislature, and a state Senate office building in Olympia is named after him.
Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who represents southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, also voted to impeach Trump. The 3rd District includes suburbs of Portland, Oregon, and is more moderate than the area Newhouse represents.
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