{"id":182750,"date":"2015-06-14T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/14\/blue-dog-democrat-comes-home\/"},"modified":"2015-06-14T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T04:00:00","slug":"blue-dog-democrat-comes-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/14\/blue-dog-democrat-comes-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Dog Democrat Comes Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Democratic Congressman Joe Baca has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sbsun.com\/government-and-politics\/20150612\/former-blue-dog-rep-joe-baca-goes-republican\">become a Republican<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Joe Baca, a longtime Democrat who represented San Bernardino County citizens for more than 30 years as a trustee for the San Bernardino Community College District, an assemblyman, state senator and congressman, is now a registered Republican.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Baca, 68, of Fontana, changed his party affiliation on June 2, said Melissa Eickman, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Elections Office.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Prior to making the switch, Baca had been a registered Democrat in San Bernardino County since January 1976, Eickman said.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Baca said Friday he and his wife thought long and hard about the decision, which he said reflects his \u201ccore Christian values\u201d and his pro-growth, pro-business philosophy.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">As a legislator, Baca said he often voted conservatively on many issues. He said he secured funding for transportation and infrastructure projects in his district, and fought to delist from the endangered species list the kangaroo rat, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly and the Santa Ana sucker fish, all of which he said were hindering commercial development and growth in his district.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI\u2019ve always been very conservative in nature,\u201d Baca said, adding that in the House of Representatives he was often accused of being a Republican and asked why he didn\u2019t change his political party.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Baca is a former member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a congressional caucus of moderate and conservative Democrats whose members are referred to as \u201cBlue Dogs.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Baca said he was a Blue Dog during his entire seven-term stint as a ongressman.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8216;Phants can keep him.<\/p>\n<p>H\/T, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sbsun.com\/government-and-politics\/20150612\/former-blue-dog-rep-joe-baca-goes-republican\">Down with Tyranny<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Democratic Congressman Joe Baca has become a Republican: Joe Baca, a longtime Democrat who represented San Bernardino County citizens for more than 30 years as a trustee for the San Bernardino Community College District, an assemblyman, state senator and congressman, is now a registered Republican.Baca, 68, of Fontana, changed his party affiliation on June &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1051,978,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hypocrisy","category-politics","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182750"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}