(AP) — House Democrats seem certain to nominate Nancy Pelosi for two more years as speaker, but she’ll be leading a smaller majority divided along ideological lines as it tries shepherding President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda toward enactment.
Pelosi, D-Calif., faced no announced rivals for the post Wednesday as the chamber’s Democrats planned their first-ever virtual leadership elections in response to the pandemic. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and No. 3 party leader Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., were also on track to retain their positions.
“Let us all be advocates for unity in the Democratic party, where our values are opportunity and community,” Pelosi wrote to Democrats this week.
The first female speaker, Pelosi has won wide acclaim among Democrats as a leading foe of outgoing President Donald Trump in battles over impeachment, immigration and health care. She’s given as good as she’s gotten from the insult-prone president, sometimes directly to his face, prompting him to call her “Crazy Nancy” and supporters to create memes and action figures honoring her.
But with some votes still being tallied in this month’s elections, 10 incumbent House Democrats have been defeated, dashing expectations of adding seats and damaging party morale. Democrats were on track to have perhaps a 222-213 majority, one of the smallest in decades.
This has sparked finger-pointing, with progressives saying the party failed to adequately win over minority and young liberal voters. Moderates say that they were hurt by far-left initiatives like defunding the police and that Pelosi should have struck a preelection stimulus deal with the White House.
Besides bitterness over their election setback, many Democrats continue calling for fresh leadership. Pelosi and Hoyer have been No. 1 and 2 House Democrats since 2003, while Clyburn rose to the No. 3 ranks in 2007. Pelosi and Clyburn are 80, Hoyer is 81.
Yet with no plausible rival, Pelosi seemed headed to what would be her seventh and eight years as speaker. She served the first four during the 2000s until Republicans recaptured the House majority in the tea party election of 2010, a conservative uprising that presaged the rise of Trump.
In one indication of her strength, one conservative Democrat who’s opposed Pelosi before said he expected her to be reelected and said he might support her this time.
“I think she gets it,” Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., who said he’s spoken to Pelosi about the need for a moderate agenda, said in an interview. “She may be the bulwark against the extreme far-left.”
Schrader said far-left progressives have been “toxic to our brand” by favoring policies he said cost jobs. “We can’t continue to talk down to people and only talk about identity politics,” he said.
House Democrats were also voting Wednesday and Thursday on lesser leadership posts.
Pelosi needs only a majority of the approximately 222 House Democrats to be renominated as the party’s candidate for speaker. It was possible Wednesday’s vote would be by acclamation, forgoing the secret ballot roll call set by party rules.
“I think it’s smooth sailing,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a Pelosi supporter. “We’ve maintained our majority, but it’s slender. But I don’t think anybody would be foolish enough to take advantage of the situation.”
When the new Congress convenes in early January and the House elects its new speaker, Pelosi will need the majority of votes cast by both parties. Since nearly all Republicans are expected to back their leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Pelosi can afford to lose only a few Democrats.
When Pelosi nailed down the support she needed to become speaker in 2018, she said she’d agreed to a proposal limiting her to serving in the job only through 2022. Several lawmakers and aides said memories of that commitment could lessen her opposition this time.
Also potentially helping Pelosi is the decision by Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., to step aside as chair of House Democrats’ political arm.
Some Democrats have faulted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for insufficiently protecting moderate Democratic incumbents from swing districts. They’re also unhappy that the committee did not detect the huge numbers of GOP voters Trump drew to the polls — which was missed by Republican and independent pollsters alike.
“Having Trump on the ticket in ’20 was very different from not having him on the ticket in ’18,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., another Pelosi supporter.
When Democrats won back the House in 2018, 32 of them voted against Pelosi’s nomination as speaker. But that was a larger majority than this one, giving her more margin for error then.
By the time the full House elected her in January 2019, she’d whittled down her opposition and just 13 Democrats voted against her or voted “present.”
Of the 13 Democrats who opposed Pelosi in 2019, two have been defeated and one, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, became a Republican. That leaves 10 Democrats who voted against her, though another, New York’s Anthony Brindisi, may still lose his election.
Pelosi has pushed bills through the House — they died in the GOP-run Senate — embodying Democratic priorities overhauling ethics and campaign finance laws, lowering health care costs and rebuilding infrastructure. She’s also been a prodigious fundraiser for candidates.
To prevent lawmakers from crowding unsafely into one room, Democrats’ leadership candidates were delivering remarks to scattered lawmakers using Zoom, the online meeting platform. Republicans met in a crowded hotel ballroom Tuesday and reelected their current leadership team.
Democrats’ votes were being cast on a new app designed to keep the process secure by using encryption.
In a test run Tuesday, Democrats voted on their favorite all-time musician. Their choice by a wide margin: the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.
