The Doug LaMalfa I covered: Authentic, cranky and deeply caring

If you hadn’t met Doug LaMalfa, his campaign signs probably seemed like the sort of eye-rolling attempt at folksy charm some slick politician who’s never had dirt under his fingernails might use to appeal to rural voters.

“He’s one of us!” they read, a cartoon cowboy hat perched off an “L” in LaMalfa’s name. 

But as I covered LaMalfa’s political career over the past two decades, often critically, I came to appreciate those signs as an accurate description of LaMalfa, the rural North State’s longtime Republican member of Congress. He died in surgery after being rushed to a Butte County hospital Monday for a medical emergency.

LaMalfa was 65. 

Love or hate his hardline, far-right Republican politics – President Donald Trump praised him Tuesday for voting “for me 100% of the time” — LaMalfa was as unique a political figure as you’ll find in Washington, D.C. or in Sacramento. When he said he was “one of us,” it wasn’t an act. LaMalfa, a fourth-generation rice farmer from Butte County, was as engaged with and emblematic of the people in his district as any politician I’ve known.  

You were much more likely to see LaMalfa having a burger and a beer at a watering hole like The Tackle Box in Chico or at the gas station filling up one of his classic cars than you were to see him standing at a lectern in a suit.

From the rice fields of the Sacramento Valley to Modoc County’s border with Oregon, odds were high you’d see LaMalfa’s tall, husky frame as he mingled with his constituents at some Rotary Club luncheon, a county fair, 4-H event, community festival or car show. He was usually wearing faded jeans and scuffed cowboy boots. 

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate and ex-state Sen. Brian Dahle, a farmer from Lassen County, represented much of LaMalfa’s rural district in the Legislature. He said he was in awe of how plugged in LaMalfa was.

“He’s in Modoc. He’s in Plumas. He’s in Siskiyou. He’s in Chico. He’s everywhere and then he’s on a plane five hours back and forth (to Washington, D.C.),” Dahle said. “It was amazing. … I always used to say, ‘You can’t out-backyard barbecue Doug LaMalfa because you’ll go to a backyard barbecue, and he’ll be there.’”

I grew up in LaMalfa’s district and most of my friends and family still live there. They bumped into LaMalfa all the time. I also covered what felt like 100 events featuring LaMalfa as a reporter fresh out of college, first at the Auburn Journal in Placer County and then for six years at the Record Searchlight in Redding in Shasta County. Later, during seven years at The Sacramento Bee, my reporting on environmental issues often took me home to LaMalfa’s district.

My career as a reporter began as LaMalfa was beginning his career in state and federal politics. After graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and working on his family farm, LaMalfa was elected to the Legislature in 2002 first as a Republican member of the Assembly, then as a state senator. 

A politician unlike any other

LaMalfa was elected to Congress in 2012, and held the seat ever since. He planned to try to hold onto it after California voters in November passed Proposition 50, which redrew LaMalfa’s district to skew Democratic. Former California Sen. President Pro Tem Mike McGuire has announced he’s running for LaMalfa’s seat. His death shakes up the political landscape considerably, leaving uncertainty over who will be the Republican challenger in the expected special election to replace him. 

Over the years, I covered LaMalfa, sometimes unflatteringly. At the Searchlight, I wrote about the federal subsidies his family farm received, even as Republicans like him at the time were discussing slashing “welfare” programs for the poor. I wrote about how much money he charged taxpayers for mileage as he zipped around his massive district in one of his gas-guzzling sports cars.

At the Bee, I wrote about how LaMalfa, who as a farmer knew his way around heavy equipment, got into a bulldozer in Sisikiyou County and began mowing down illegal pot farms with the local sheriff’s department.

“I love the smell of diesel power in the afternoon. It smells like victory,” LaMalfa said in a video clip he posted on social media, riffing on the line from the Vietnam War epic, “Apocalypse Now,” before breaking into a grin.

It was a remarkably tone-deaf thing to say since those pot farms were owned by Asian immigrants, some of them Hmong whose relatives fought in the Vietnam War. They were accusing local authorities of race-based harassment. The movie line came right after the military napalmed an innocent Vietnamese village. 

I skewered LaMalfa and his no-compromise style, particularly on environmental issues, in a series of essays I wrote for The Bee about intractable wildlife problems in northeastern California, whose habitats are dear to me. 

I called him on his cellphone, five years to the day of his death, while the violent mob of Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. He didn’t pick up. LaMalfa would later join the group of Republicans who voted against certifying Joe Biden as president. 

All that’s to say, I’m sure plenty of liberal members of LaMalfa’s district aren’t exactly shedding any tears at his loss, but I got choked up Tuesday morning when I read the news he’d died.

I always liked LaMalfa personally, though I don’t think he liked me very much thanks to some of those stories. I guess I just appreciated how Doug LaMalfa never really stopped being Doug LaMalfa, an unpolished farmer who was kind and warm in person, but who also spoke his mind, no matter who was in the room.

I remember seeing him once as I was covering the Kool April Nights car show in Redding. I’m sure he got some face time with the people he hoped would vote for him in the next election, but I could tell he wasn’t really there for that. He was checking out all the shiny old cars because he was a classic car guy and that was his jam. One of LaMalfa’s former staffers said he liked to ask potential hires “What’s your favorite car?”

I’ll also never forget LaMalfa attending an event in Redding at which my wife got an award for her job in a program that helped underprivileged kids. Only a couple of dozen people were there, there were no media cameras, and his office didn’t send out a press release saying he would be there. LaMalfa went because it was just a nice thing to do, quietly supporting those who supported Redding’s troubled youth.

And even though he was a touch frosty with me, he’d always ask how my wife and her dad were during interviews. He regularly ran into my father-in-law in Chico, where he volunteers for various service organizations. 

Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland was LaMalfa’s roommate while the two served in the Legislature. He said “Papa Doug” always took the time, no matter how busy he was, to ask him about his daughter, now in college, who he used to hold as a baby.

“He just really is a deeply caring human being,” Strickland said. 

Never afraid to speak his mind

In this era of hyperpartisanship, I respected how, instead of running to cable news to offer a partisan critique, LaMalfa would wait to speak with then-President Biden after his State of the Union addresses. He politely pressed Biden personally to pay more attention to wildfire prevention and other issues important to his constituents. 

I also respected how intensely passionate LaMalfa was about the Oroville Dam spillway disaster in 2017 and the Camp Fire that burned down the town of Paradise the next year. At one point, LaMalfa got on a conference call, hosted by state officials, for the media and began lambasting the people in charge. He was livid. 

Those were his family and friends living below the shattered spillway and whose homes had burned in Paradise.

“You may not agree with his particular viewpoint or his particular stance on an issue,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea, who worked closely with LaMalfa during the dam ordeal, the Camp Fire and several other major disasters, told me. “That said, I do believe wholeheartedly, he was passionate about representing the interests of the North State residents that he served, and he did it consistent with his values and what he thought was best for the community.”

Erin Mellon feels the same, despite often being on the receiving end of blistering criticism from LaMalfa when she was a spokesperson for the California Department of Water Resources, which manages Oroville Dam. 

Although she is a Democrat, Mellon said even after LaMalfa gave her an earful, she appreciated how kindly he and his team treated her afterwards. At one point, LaMalfa even took her on a personal tour of the spillway in his red Thunderbird convertible.

“In one meeting, he could be reaming you and ripping you, and then the next second, he’s taking you for a tour of Oroville Dam in his prized red convertible sports car,” she said, choking up at the memory. “For him to take that time to respect you as a person is unique. … He was very authentic. He was really himself, and he was really, he was just a great representative of that part of the state. He really fought, I think, for his constituents, and he wasn’t terribly selfish about it.”

LaMalfa is survived by his wife Jill, four children, one grandchild, two sisters and a host of cousins, according to a statement from his office.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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