Former GOP Rep. Darrell Issa retired from Congress this year, but we may have him to kick around some more. On Monday, Issa confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that he was considering running for California's 50th District, a seat held by fellow GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter. The paper did not say whether Issa was open to challenging Hunter, who is scheduled to stand trial in September for allegedly spending campaign money for his own personal purchases, or if he was only willing to run if Hunter’s not on the ballot next year.
This isn’t the first time Issa has considered swapping seats. Issa survived a very close race in 2016 in his neighboring 49th District, and he decided not to seek re-election there last year. But in February of 2018, just weeks after he made his retirement announcement, Issa reportedly told his still-colleagues that he was thinking about making a switcharoo and running for the considerably more conservative 50th District just to the east of his current constituency.
Hunter, who was under investigation at the time but had not yet been indicted, was not at all inclined to go along with it, though, and Issa wasn’t on the ballot anywhere last year. In September, Donald Trump nominated Issa to lead the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, but the Senate still has not confirmed him.
It seems that it isn’t just the upper chamber of Congress that doesn’t want to deal with Issa. Last month, when The Hill broke the news that he was once again mulling a run for the 50th District, they added that some GOP House members believed he had “rubbed colleagues the wrong way.”
One unnamed member sounded pissed at Issa for wanting to come back to Congress after abandoning the 49th District, which Democrat Mike Levin flipped last year. This member declared, “Issa had his time here,” and added, “[Y]eah, we know California is a challenging political environment, but I don’t think there’s been a lot of calls made to have him come back.”
Hunter also sounded no happier with Issa succeeding him than he did last year when the idea was first raised. While Hunter said Issa had supported him in the past, he declared, “He is not in the district, nothing close to it. He probably doesn’t know much about the district.” Of course, if Hunter ends up needing to vacate this seat, he won’t have much of a say in deciding who replaces him.
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