Even as a Democrat (technically a democratic socialist), it’s difficult to dislike Darin LaHood, akin to scolding a gifted musician’s child for being tone-deaf.

But it’s frustrating. The 18th District’s Republican Congressman seems to exalt bipartisanship and express concerns for social issues that liberals value (health care, child care) while steadfastly backing President Trump and embracing extreme positions.

If he’s trying to please everyone, it may not work.

The 53-year-old attorney son of Ray LaHood, a seven-term Congressman who also served in Democratic President Obama’s cabinet, Darin was appointed in 2011 to the State Senate, where he won the seat the next year with no opponent. He served there until he won election in 2015, replacing Republican Aaron Schock, who resigned. After completing that term, Darin won races in 2016, 2018 and 2020 by around 100,000 votes, helped by a Democratic Party that didn’t bother really competing.

In recent months, Darin pushed two bills dealing with health care and a third addressing family leave and child care, all seemingly clumsy attempts to play both sides of the aisle, insubstantial, or distractions from actions that may not play well with most voters.

After Darin in June received an Award for Conservative Achievement from the American Conservative Union (which also recognizes Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley), he said, “I am proud of my record advocating for our conservative values in central and west-central Illinois.”

Also, Darin was 1 of 106 Congressional Republicans who supported the December lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results; the day before the Jan. 6 Capitol Insurrection he told Springfield’s State Journal Register he was undecided about backing the certification of votes, and on Jan. 8 “spoke out of both sides of his mouth,” according to professor emeritus Steve Hochstadt of Illinois College in Jacksonville.

Darin commented to local TV that “We need to come together,” Hockstadt said.

“He still asserted that there are ‘election fraud’ issues in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan,” Hockstadt added.

Recent legislation:

LaHood is the only Republican of four lawmakers who re-introduced the Value in Health Care Act of 2020 (HR 7791), which wants to reform Medicare payment systems to boost involvement in Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), provider networks that coordinate care and share financial responsibilities to increase efficiency. Ideally, providers make more money by keeping patients healthy.

“The Value in Healthcare Act is a commonsense proposal that includes substantive reforms to encourage and support greater participation by health-care providers in ACOs, particularly in our rural communities,” Darin said.

Rural health care certainly needs help. Rural residents tend to be older, sicker and poorer than the general population, and often uninsured. More than 40% of rural hospitals operate in the red, according to health-care consultants Navigant, which said 17.3% of Illinois’ rural hospitals are at high risk.

But HR 7791 and a second bill, the Rural and Underserved Small Hospital (RUSH) Protection Act Darin said he introduced, may not be enough. (Democrat Ron Kind of Wisconsin was actually its primary sponsor; Darin joined two other Democrats and two Republicans as co-sponsors.)

Praise came from OSF HealthCare VP Chris Manson, who said, “This bipartisan measure will prevent harmful cuts and help to protect rural communities that depend on these important clinics,” and the proposal indirectly was approved in April after its inclusion as an amendment in Medicare sequester legislation.

However, the president of a rural hospital network based in Canton said neither piece of legislation will help the 81-bed Graham Hospital or its five clinics in rural communities.

“Both could have positive impact on our peers,” said Robert Senneff, whose nonprofit hospital had net income of some $800,000 on 2020 revenues of $232 million, according to the American Hospital Directory this May.

“What we would really like to see happen is to have the ability to open additional clinics in rural communities and be reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid based on our costs,” Senneff said. “That was the model in the past, and it was replaced by a fixed reimbursement model for any new clinics, with that fixed payment significantly below our anticipated costs, making it financially impractical to expand. Residents living in those markets are then forced to seek care elsewhere, or defer care, exacerbating health problem(s).”

Senneff added, “I do believe bipartisanship is good not only in health care, but in general.”

Darin’s third recent bill is the Promoting Equitable Access to Paid Family Leave Act, “ensuring that working parents have the ability to choose how they care for their children, particularly a newborn,” Darin said.

That sounds good, but it seeks to amend Title IV of the Social Security Act “to provide for parental leave payments to parents after the birth or adoption of a child in lieu of child-care assistance.”

Since Title IV sends block grants to states “so that children may be cared for,” one wonders whether it could raid Social Security funds to substitute for direct government aid.

Darin introduced the measure (HR4462), but it stemmed from discussions by GOP colleagues Kevin Brady of Texas and others on the Ways and Means Committee, where Darin is one of 18 Republicans.

Brady, the committee’s ranking Republican, said, “By putting the IRS in charge of your time off and child care, Democrats’ path will leave you with lower paychecks for life, less choice, fewer jobs and greater hardships.”

The IRS on Aug. 13 sent the second payment of the Child Tax Credit to families.

“Congress should support the Biden administration’s … paid family and medical leave program: vital insurance for all workers,” said Rachel Lea Scott, Associate Director of the Collaborative Center for Justice, sponsored by eight congregations of Catholic sisters.

Darin, a Dunlap Catholic, has no co-sponsors for the bill, introduced July 16.

Whether fence-mending, posturing for 2022, or awkward nods to an increasingly diverse District, such actions may be politically savvy, or risky. The area shouldn’t be taken for granted as uniformly conservative while its major city elected a liberal-leaning Black woman as mayor.

When urban and rural areas are mixed, according to Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice, “representatives may displease one of the two constituencies.”

Sometimes, you just can’t please everyone.