As he dug up the testimony, spokesman Pete Aguilar noticed a common thread among former Vice President Mike Pence’s aides: the power of prayer. So, as the California Democrat approached the end of his interrogation Thursday, he asked the witness to find solace in the Book of Daniel during the hours he spent hiding inside the Capitol by the rioters on January 6, 2021. “He refuses a king’s order that he can not follow and performs his duty – according to his oath to God,” Greg Jacob, Pence’s former adviser, who had taken refuge with him that day, told Aguilar. In the exchange, Aguilar recorded the kind of moment he was looking for as one of the nine lawmakers on the select committee investigating the Capitol attack. While some seek the legal basis to push for the prosecution of former President Donald Trump by the Justice Department, Aguilar believes the mission reaches tens of millions of voters who have not paid attention to every detail of the attack. Even his family members are more concerned about the cost of gas and groceries in these tense economic times. “Part of that is,” Aguilar explained in an interview in his office late Thursday, “how can I reach my grandmother?” “How can I get people who are not so immersed in political weeds to pay attention to these things?” MP Liz Cheney tells Americans why Jan. 6 should terrorize them In his fourth term, Aguilar, 42, has taken this approach to both the commission’s inquiry and the work Democrats must do to extend their appeal beyond their most ardent supporters. A junior member of House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leading group, Aguilar is the highest-ranking member of the Spanish Congressional Caucus. He is also a member of the Coalition of New Democrats, a group of lawmakers mainly from suburban swing districts. After serving as mayor of the Redlands, a town of 70,000 people about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, Aguilar narrowly won the long-running GOP stronghold in 2014 and has since built it in a solid blue seat. This combination, along with the ambition that seems to be found only in Parliament, explains why close friends see Aguilar as the man who could become the first Spanish Speaker of Parliament. “We must spread our message about the struggle for the middle class. We need to make it a reality for people at the kitchen table. “They have to feel it, not just listen to it, but they have to feel that House Democrats are fighting for them,” Aguilar said in an interview earlier this month before the commission began its high-profile hearings. Pelosi (California) chose him for the selection committee because he is the type of legislator that others are attracted to, more than just a “team player”. “It usually means he’s a good follower, but that’s not the case with you,” he said, recalling the call. On June 16, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack described a firm Vice President Mike Pence despite pressure from President Donald Trump. (Video: Adriana Usero / The Washington Post) As vice-president of the Democratic caucus, he holds the sixth position in the leadership, an amorphous position. He has told other lawmakers that he should be seen as a “human propositionist”. Sometimes that means convening groups, including Senate Democrats, to discuss what kinds of immigration legislation they have the opportunity to get into President Biden’s office. Other times, it means that Aguilar hears complaints about the House program. His recurring theme of lawmaking and campaigning is that Democrats all too often assume that voters are loyal consumers of politics as if they were all fans of the MSNBC prime-time series. Most do not understand the historically narrow margins in Parliament and the Senate, nor do they fully understand the occult rules like the filibuster. “They need to feel safer and better, and they need to know that Democrats care. It is not that we do not do things. I think we are. “It’s that they do not feel we are doing enough,” said Aguilar. “And they feel that the president is better than the last, but that they still do not feel so comfortable in their own personal position.” Of Mexican descent, Aguilar has been disappointed with the way Democrats treated all Hispanics with a wide brush, leading to a worrying decline in political support from this bloc. Anti-police rhetoric cost Democrats votes in South Texas, he said, where a huge portion of Hispanic families work for Border Patrol or local law enforcement. “They are very different,” he said. “As you speak to a Mexican American in Southern California versus a Cuban American in South Florida, we must recognize that we can not have literature on the boilerplate campaign.” Aguilar has joined forces with Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.) and Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.), Both slightly ahead of him in leadership positions, to forge an alliance that many Democrats see as the next generation of leaders. “We are all very close. “Pete Aguilar is a good friend, colleague and partner in government in the closest possible way,” said Jeffries, 51, of the trio. But that’s leading to the parliamentary group’s most sensitive issue: when the 80-somethings trio – Pelosi, majority leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) And Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (DS.C.) – press from one part of it. Most Democrats simply pay tribute to the combined 106 years of congressional experience between Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn, more than half the time they served in their current leadership position. “With this regime, in my opinion, they can choose their time. “They can choose what that transition looks like and when it will happen,” Aguilar said. GOP voters select candidates with first allegiance to Trump, not McConnell When Pelosi called last summer to ask him to serve on the Jan. 6 committee, Aguilar’s first reaction was to try to say no, for fear of how the profile might affect his wife and two children. “I did not need death threats,” he recalls thinking. Now, it has been consumed by research. Each hearing has a well-defined theme that can be presented in about two hours, very different from the 10 or 12 hour rolling marathons of some congressional hearings. It is destined to have a wide impact on a society that now watches extremely limited six- or seven-episode series on HBO or Netflix, to the beat of the popular “Slow Burn” podcast. “It’s not Watergate, where you only have five networks and they all go wall to wall. “We have to be concise,” he said. Aguilar commissioned Trump’s campaign to persuade Pence to simply reject certain states that Biden had won, a completely unconstitutional move. He spent six weeks studying the deposits of top Pence advisers and Trump aides, doing nothing else. It was then that he noticed how faith continued to come with Pence’s team. Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, testified that they began Jan. 6 with a prayer in the vice president’s office and that when the commotion ended early the next morning, Short sent Pence a scripture that ended with “I kept faith. “ This provoked Jacob’s own reflection on the Book of Daniel and defied the king. Aguilar said these moments need to be made public so that many people can learn how dangerous it was that day. “There are these profiles of people along the way who all collectively stood in the rift to protect democracy,” he said. “And I think that’s the story that’s worth telling.”
