WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s been four months since Ohio Congressman Anthony Gonzalez joined nine other Republican House members in voting to impeach former President Donald Trump.
What You Need To Know
- Four months after voting to impeach former President Donald Trump, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez is trying to remain focused on policymaking
- Gonzalez was the only Ohio Republican to vote for impeachment and has been censured by the state party and faces calls to resign
- The Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked Gonzalez as the most effective Republican freshman House member last Congress
- University of Akron Professor David Cohen said his impeachment vote could overshadow his legislative accomplishments
Since then, Gonzalez has faced calls to resign and now has several primary opponents — a sharp turn for a young Republican once viewed as a rising star in his party.
Gonzalez came to Congress in January 2019 and hit the ground running.
According to the Center for Effective Lawmaking, he became the most effective Republican freshman House member in the 116th Congress and was ranked the second highest-scoring GOP member of Ohio’s congressional delegation.
“Not only did he actually see the greatest number of his bills pass the House of Representatives, he also saw two of his bills ultimately be signed into law, and he saw a wide body of his legislation receive some degree of intermediate consideration,” Alan Wiseman, a co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, said Tuesday.
The former Ohio State University football star has branded himself a policy wonk on Capitol Hill, which has led to leadership positions on the House Financial Services Committee and a Republican China task force.
“He really is all about policy and trying to be a good congressman and make serious law,” David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron, said Monday.
But after the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, Gonzalez became a hero to some and a pariah to others when he was one of just 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach former President Trump for inciting the violence.
Since then, he’s drawn a rebuke from Trump, two primary challenges from Republicans, and repudiation by the Ohio Republican Party, which voted earlier this month to censure Gonzalez and call for him to resign.
Gonzalez has declined Spectrum News’ interview requests since Jan. 6, but he did tell Cleveland.com’s Buckeye Talk podcast last week that he’s trying to remain focused on legislating, specifically on making sure the U.S. is competitive with China and that jobs come back to his northeast Ohio district.
“Those things are so much more important than any censure vote or anything that anybody is going to lob at me from a criticism standpoint,” Gonzalez told the podcast’s hosts. “So I keep my head down, I go to work, I work hard, and I try to deliver for my district. And everything else is just noise.”
But in the politically divisive age of Trump, can that noise be too loud?
Cohen said watching the Ohio GOP turn on someone once considered a rising star has been telling.
“For something other than a scandal, committing a crime, some sort of personal failing, I have not seen anything like this,” Cohen said.
Gonzalez did raise more money in the first quarter of this year — after the impeachment vote — than ever before, but he’ll be running for reelection without much of his party’s support.
Just last week, House Republicans voted to remove Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership position for continuing to criticize Trump and his lies about the election.
Wiseman, from the Center for Effective Lawmaking, said Gonzalez could continue to make his mark legislatively since he’s already established a bipartisan reputation.
But Cohen argued the impeachment vote will not be forgotten by Republican voters who remain loyal to Trump, and who view that loyalty as non-negotiable.
“This is the fundamental litmus test of what it means to be a Republican right now,” Cohen said.
