2 mos. after election, Grijalva says Speaker will swear her in Wednesday

Seven weeks after she won a special election to Congress from Tucson, U.S. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva said Tuesday that she finally has a date to be sworn into office. She’s scheduled to finally be seated on Wednesday afternoon.

Grijalva, who won her Sept. 23 election with 69 percent of the vote, has been unable to start work because House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would not administer the oath of office until Senate Democrats agreed to pass a House bill to fund the federal government, which has been shut down since Oct. 1.

But with enough Democrats agreeing to advance legislation to reopen government, Grijalva said Tuesday that Johnson had told her that he would have her formally seated at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

The House must hold a floor vote to seat a new member, so the hold-up has been more complex than a simple swearing of the oath of office. Johnson has kept the House from taking any action for nearly two months, to pressure Senate Democrats into voting for a Republican budget. With a group of Democrats breaking ranks, the House must now reconvene to take a vote on the changes made in the Senate.

Grijalva told Tucson Sentinel on Tuesday that she had “lots of mixed emotions.”

“It’s fairly surreal,” she said. “Not sure it has sunk in yet.”

She said that her mother, husband and three children would be on hand for the ceremony, despite the short notice.

Until she is seated, Grijalva has not been able to open a Congressional District 7 office in Tucson or hire any staff. She’s been unable to access parts of the Capitol complex without an escort, or even use the copier in the Washington D.C. office.

She said last month that the delay was “robbing” her constituents “of the essential constituent services they count on every day, especially during this Republican government shutdown.”

Grijalva had blamed Johnson’s reluctance to seat her on her promise to be the 218th and deciding signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on House legislation to release files related to deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019 shortly after he was arrested on sex trafficking charges.

The New York Medical Examiner and Federal Bureau of Prisons ruled Esptein’s death a suicide but that determination has been met with public skepticism. During his 2024 campaign, President Donald Trump said he would “probably” release files related to Epstein but so far, the files released from the Justice Department have mostly been documents that were already public.

Legislation in the House of Representatives to force the release of the Epstein files has stalled, but 218 signatures on a discharge petition would force Johnson to allow a vote on the House floor.

Grijalva has pointed out that Johnson swore in other members of Congress who won special elections right after their districts voted, without waiting for official results or final vote counts. U.S. Rep. James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democrat, was seated in September just a day after winning his special election. Earlier this year, two Florida Republicans were sworn in the day after their special elections — a move taken during a “pro forma” session while the House was not conducting regular business.

Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, first said he would schedule Grijalva’s swearing-in ceremony when Congress returned from recess on Oct. 7, but because of the ongoing government shutdown that started on Oct. 1, he has kept the House of Representatives in recess.

As complaints about the delay grew, Johnson eventually said he would not swear Grijalva into office until the government reopens.

Johnson had halted all substantive business in the House of Representatives since the shutdown, but on Tuesday, he called on members of Congress to return to Washington after the Senate moved forward on a funding plan on Monday.

Grijalva won a landslide in the CD7 special election to replace her father, the late Democrat Raúl Grijalva, who died in March following a battle with lung cancer.