After an embarrassing failure last week, House Republicans tried again tonight at impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – and this time they succeeded. Impeachment articles were approved on a 214-213 party-line vote, making Mayorkas the first cabinet secretary to be impeached since 1876.
Among New Jersey’s representatives, the vote breakdown was identical to last week, with Reps. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), Chris Smith (R-Manchester), and Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) in support and all nine Democrats opposed. In fact, not a single House member changed their vote versus last week; the only reason it succeeded this time was that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) returned from cancer treatment. (Four members were absent, two from each party.)
House Republicans have argued that Mayorkas has failed to do his duty at the southern border, thus warranting impeachment. Three renegade Republicans disagreed and voted against the impeachment articles, which was enough to sink last week’s effort but not this week’s.
“By impeaching Secretary Mayorkas, the House has made itself clear: refusing to fulfill one’s duties to the Constitution and the American people is not an option,” Van Drew said on Twitter. “I am proud to have joined my colleagues in voting to hold Mayorkas accountable.”
Democrats, meanwhile, excoriated the process as politically motivated and divorced from the issues most Americans care about, just like they did last week.
“Groundhog Day was two weeks ago,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) said shortly before the vote. “Yet, here we are once again voting on a sham impeachment resolution whose entire goal is to distract the American people from House Republicans’ utter failure to govern because they don’t have any legislative proposals that are popular with or meet the needs of the American people.”
The Democratic-led Senate, however, is exceedingly unlikely to convict Mayorkas and remove him from office – so tonight’s vote may be as far as Republicans’ anti-Mayorkas efforts are able to go.