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A late-December contest among the minority party in the House is rarely a headline-grabbing affair. But the Democratic Party is currently split over a committee position that is quite symbolic over its internal warring about the future. It involves—who else?—Nancy Pelosi and AOC.
After November’s drubbing, House Democrats signaled that they were prepared to accept a changing of the guard atop some of the important House committees.
It began with Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, age 61, convincing Judiciary Committee ranking member New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, age 74, to step down from the post so Raskin could succeed him. Shortly after that, 60-year-old Jared Huffman of California convinced 76-year-old Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva to step down from the top Dem spot on the Natural Resources Committee.
In both of these cases, septuagenarians passed the torch to sexagenarians. But when it came time to replace Raskin on the important Oversight Committee, an actual young person made a play for the role: 35-year-old New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Almost overnight it seemed that AOC had the job sewn up: She secured the support of the majority of the Democratic members on Oversight and was talking to the press about her hopes for the role. But the position is not awarded by a vote of committee members. It’s voted on by the entirety of the House Democratic Caucus.
That’s where the trouble started. Not one to let a young person ascend quietly, Nancy Pelosi entered the fray. The patron saint of Democratic gerontocracy, 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi is supposedly retired from leadership, but this month, she actively threw her weight behind 74-year-old Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, who was just diagnosed with throat cancer. Now, Pelosi is whipping votes for Connolly, whose potential promotion would cap off this “changing of the guard” by replacing a 61-year-old with a guy in his mid-70s. And because Pelosi suffered a fall in Germany and had to have her hip replaced, she’s essentially whipping votes from a hospital bed.
Once Pelosi backed Connolly and began making calls on his behalf, the moderate New Democratic Caucus announced it was formally backing Connolly as well. Not to be outdone, the Congressional Progressive Caucus announced it was formally backing Ocasio-Cortez. And the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a rare move, threw its weight behind Ocasio-Cortez, too.
It looks like a classic battle along ideological lines for Democrats—progressives versus moderates. But it isn’t that. Ocasio-Cortez is indeed one of the best-known progressives in the country, but she’s also, importantly, one of the best-known Democrats period.
The most charitable line on those Democrats backing Connolly is that some centrist members are nervous about making AOC such a major face of the party. And lawmakers in their 60s, who have spent a long time waiting their own turns in line, don’t want to see the seniority system completely scrapped. If you trawl through C-SPAN clips you’ll also find that Connolly can be an animated messenger—he’s a self-proclaimed Irish fighter—and he definitely has a cool mustache.
And yet, on the merits and optics, it’s a very, very difficult case to make. During a second Trump presidency, Oversight will be one of the most important bully pulpits to expose and interrogate the incoming administration’s flagrant corruption, to hold corporate executives’ feet to the fire, and more. AOC has been on Oversight for years and has done her time there; it’s a committee that the old House leadership shunted numerous progressives to in the past. Those viral clips of AOC dressing down a corporate executive or, say, Trump’s deportation czar Tom Homan? A lot of those come from Oversight.
With Trump in office, the role of Oversight will be extremely important, especially for a party that is begging voters to believe that they are well positioned to tackle corruption. AOC is objectively a more skilled communicator and narrative shaper than just about anyone in her party, and certainly more than Connolly. Her ability as an explainer is top-notch, and her penchant for conveying outrage and injustice is sorely lacking in the party’s upper echelons.
Connolly is an Oversight lifer, having served on the committee since he arrived in Congress in 2009. By all accounts, he’s adept and seasoned in the role. He won a positive reputation for his work beating back Republican witch hunts during the Barack Obama years, experience which will likely serve well in the upcoming administration.
But as Democrats try to shine a light on wanton corruption in the Republican Party and in the economy broadly, it’s pretty obvious which one of these representatives has a bigger megaphone to explain what’s going on. Ocasio-Cortez has 8.1 million followers. Connolly has 4,600.
On the optics, it’s even harder to justify. Pelosi, who is undergoing hip replacement surgery, is … well, a stalwart member of the oldest guard who now appears to be score-settling over a feud with Ocasio-Cortez that is six years old. Pelosi’s penchant for backroom sabotage was easy to cheer when she was pushing fellow octogenarian and likely loser Joe Biden out of the presidential race; it’s harder to justify when an eminently qualified rising star—who, whether Pelosi likes it personally or not, is widely known to be a cornerstone of the party’s future—pushes for a simple promotion.
Ocasio-Cortez has spent the past few years being a good Democratic soldier. When she first arrived in Washington, this wasn’t necessarily the case. In late 2020, when she ran for a position on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries seemingly retaliated for her perceived lack of loyalty by sabotaging her campaign, blocking her rise in favor of Kathleen Rice, who had been in Congress longer than AOC but lacked even the official support of her own state’s delegation.
Who, you might ask, is Kathleen Rice? Exactly. She’s not even in Congress anymore.
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