Representative Nancy Pelosi has apparently crushed a coup attempt to deprive her of the speakership she so desperately covets, but bribing a pretender to the crown with a committee assignment might not ensure her reelection.
Representative Marcia Fudge, a hard leftist who represents Ohio’s 11th District, isn’t — or wasn’t until Pelosi neutralized her with a key subcommittee post — the only anti-Pelosi member of Congress. Sixteen Democrats have signed a letter that says it’s time for the elderly Californian to step down.
The Democrats, they say, need new leadership.
Coup Fudged
Fudge floated a possible run at Pelosi in an interview with the hard-left Huffington Post.
While she stopped short of officially throwing her hat in the ring, Fudge told HuffPost she’s been “overwhelmed” by the number of people reaching out to support her potential speaker bid. She thinks the opposition to Pelosi in the caucus is much greater than the 17 Democrats who have signed a letter saying they won’t support Pelosi to be speaker. According to Fudge, if the vote were held today, Pelosi would be well short of the numbers.
“I don’t hate Nancy. I think Nancy has been a very good leader,” Fudge told HuffPost. “I just think it’s time for a new one.”
Naturally, Fudge didn’t think Pelosi was solicitous enough of blacks, the proof being that she had not endorsed a black colleague over a white colleague for majority whip. “We’re not feeling the love,” she huffed to HuffPo.
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Why would Fudge have run? Because the 2018 Democratic victory “was about a fresh start in Congress, making sure that Democratic leadership reflects the voters who gave Democrats the majority ― specifically, African-American women.”
“And so I’m saying, what is wrong with acknowledging the fact that the Democratic Party is becoming more young, more black, and more brown?” Fudge told HuffPo. “And letting that be reflected in our leadership.”
Fudge’s putative run against Pelosi didn’t last long, as Breitbart reported, after the news surfaced that Fudge signed a letter to defend Judge Lance Mason during his sentencing for viciously beating his wife. That would be bad enough, but Mason is now accused of killing the woman.
As well, Breitbart and others have observed, Pelosi tossed Fudge the chairmanship of a resurrected subcommittee on elections, where Fudge can make trouble with accusations that blacks are being denied the right to vote.
No wonder Fudge dropped plans to oppose Pelosi that had included signing a letter that carries the support of 16 of her colleagues.
The Letter
That missive, the New York Times reported yesterday, “is also exposing significant divisions just as Democrats take the majority.”
The letter made official what had until Monday been little more than a Democratic whisper campaign aimed at demonstrating that Ms. Pelosi, 78, would not have the votes to become speaker. Its organizers have hoped that threat would compel her to step aside or broker a compromise aimed at bringing fresher faces to the helm of their newly ascendant party.
The letter is polite, but firm.
“We believe more strongly than ever that the time has come for new leadership in our Caucus,” the signatories wrote. “We are thankful to Leader Pelosi for her years of service to our Country and to our Caucus. She is a historic figure whose leadership has been instrumental to some of our party’s most important legislative achievements.”
But now is the time for a new leaders because the Democrats ran on a platform of changes, the letter avers, and “our majority came on the backs of candidates who said that they would support new leadership because voters in hard-won districts, and across the country, want to see real change in Washington. We promised to change the status quo, and we intend to deliver on that promise.”
One of the signers of the letter, Representative Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), believes Pelosi and the old whites must step aside. “I think it’s time for that generational change,” Sánchez has said. “I want to be part of that transition, because I don’t intend to stay in Congress until I’m in my 70s.”
The challenge to Pelosi’s death grip on the speaker’s chair is not new. In August, NBC reported that 50 Democrats running in the midterms would oppose Pelosi, and in June, Politico reported that at least 21 Democratic challengers in the midterms would oppose her.
Photo: AP Images
