`We are in the middle of a constitutional crisis': Auchincloss looks back at Jan. 6 riot
Early in the day on Jan. 6, 2021, freshman Congressman Jake Auchincloss saw the news that Democrats had secured control of the U.S. Senate by virtue of victory in a Georgia runoff and shouted to his roommate, another member of Congress, a statement that Auchincloss said Wednesday will go down as "one of the all-time worst calls."
U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss said Wednesday that he does not want to commemorate the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol "as a historical event" but rather as something that is ongoing. "This is current events," he told the Charles River Regional Chamber's Greg Reibman. "This is happening now."
"This is going to be a good day, we took Georgia!" Auchincloss said he declared hours before he found himself barricaded inside his office watching on TV as insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
From the high hopes of the morning, Auchincloss's day sank to "the nadir of American democracy in my lifetime" as he watched Republican representatives vote to decertify election results in the wake of the violence, the congressman said Wednesday during a virtual event hosted by the Charles River Regional Chamber.
"As we commemorate it, the most important thing for me is that we not treat it as a historical event. This is not a day to be consecrated and inscribed into the history books and reflected upon and speechified about. This is current events," the Newton Democrat said. "This is happening now. We are in the middle of a constitutional crisis ... A majority of GOP voters think the election was stolen in 2020 and the groundwork is being laid for a repeat in 2024."
On Jan. 6, 2021, Auchincloss was just days into his tenure as the U.S. representative for Massachusetts' 4th Congressional District and "didn't even really know how to get from my office to the Capitol floor yet," he said. The U.S. Marine Corps veteran said Wednesday that he did not expect the crowd that had descended on Washington, D.C., that day "was going to reach violent mass" and recalled the moment he first realized the crowd would breach security at the Capitol.
"We practiced a lot of crowd control techniques heading into Afghanistan. One of the first things you learn is that you can't stagger when you're trying to do crowd control because if you create gaps side by side, and people get through you, they get behind you and then the whole line breaks," he said. "And I remember watching the line stagger and realizing they're going to get into the Capitol, this is over. The line is staggered and it's going to break and they're going to get in."
With the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and the subsequent votes to decertify election results as a formative experience early in his congressional career, Auchincloss said he decided that he would not cosponsor legislation or sign onto letters promoted by representatives who voted to reject the election results that showed Joe Biden as the winner.
Asked Wednesday how he squares his outright refusal to work with a good chunk of Republican representatives with his desire for bipartisanship, Auchincloss said he does not see the two as being at odds because he still seeks to work with other Republicans.
"This commitment to not work with that 30 percent, not only does that not, to me, undermine bipartisanship, it actually reinforces it," he said. "Because I've got two core jobs in Washington -- one is to represent the values of my constituents and the other is to advance their priorities. And those two jobs oftentimes have a slight tension to them. And by being very clear about 'here's the red line,' ... I feel like even if it might help advance the priority, it no longer represents the values of the district."
He added, "As a pragmatic note, the people who voted to decertify are also the ones who are by far the least likely to have ideas that we would be working together on in the first place. They tended to be the most, most, most socially conservative."