Farm worker faces No. 2 Republican for House seat
The perpetually angry smirking face of the future
"While we are waiting for you on immigration reform, who should be harvesting America's food?"
It's a provocative query and the foundation of Garcia's long-shot challenge to McCarthy, a four-term incumbent who rose to power after another GOP leader thought unsinkable, Virginia's Eric Cantor, fell to an unknown candidate in a primary.
Garcia's is a longshot challenge. He's an unknown California farm worker who got on the ballot as a write-in candidate. But he now has backing from labor unions, and ambitions to hold the new House majority leader to account in his own, agriculture-rich back yard for the failure of the Republican House to move immigration legislation.
"My idea is to send a message that the whole country will hear," Garcia said in Spanish in a phone interview from Wasco, Calif., after a night shift hauling tomatoes. "The farmworkers are the ones who put the food on the tables of the whole country. And we are not being represented."
Garcia's candidacy comes with immigration legislation dead in Congress and President Barack Obama preparing to act on his own to address the dysfunctional system, including potentially extending work permits and relief from deportation to millions.
That could have a profound impact on McCarthy's district at the southern tip of California's Central Valley, where many thousands of workers, many of them here illegally, labor in the fields harvesting grapes, almonds, lettuce and other crops. ...
http://news.yahoo.com/farm-worker-faces-no-2-republican-house-seat-084950744--election.html
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