House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who has run the House Democratic caucus for the last 14 years, is expected to remain the top elected leader, but she’s fending off a challenge from Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who says Democrats failed to connect to people who backed Donald Trump and it’s time to shakeup the leadership.
“I think I could make a big difference pulling those Trump voters back because those are the voters who voted for me,” Ryan told reporters on Tuesday evening.
House Democrats will vote in a secret ballot contest on Wednesday morning. Although there has been some grumbling in recent years about the refusal of top House Democratic leaders, who are mostly in their 70’s, to provide chances for newer members, this race features Ryan taking those grievances public.
Both Ryan and Pelosi have been calling, emailing and meeting their colleagues to make their pitches on why they should lead a demoralized caucus, which is still searching for a strategy for dealing with President-elect Trump and a strengthened Republican-led Congress next year.
Ryan, 43, maintains that Pelosi, a California Democrat who is 76, has limited appeal in the heartland and other working-class areas where Democrats lost badly this fall.
For the most part, Pelosi has refused to engage in a back in forth with Ryan, but on Tuesday she fired back at the Ohio Democrat, who was a frequent surrogate for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in his home state, telling the Huffington Post in an interview, “he didn’t even carry his district for Hillary Clinton.”
The Minority Leader insisted she had “strong support from our friends in the unions, including steelworkers, which I guess are his area.”
She brushed off his criticism that she can’t appeal to voters in rural areas and on conservative media outlets, saying, “You know what? If you want to come interview me, I’m happy to answer your questions about how we go forward. I’m not going to pay attention to, ‘I can’t step in a union hall.’ I’m a woman of steel in there. … I’m constantly invited by the unions to go to their meetings. That’s just not, it’s just not true.”
Ryan said he agrees with Pelosi’s strategy to fight Republicans’ efforts to overhaul entitlement programs like Medicare, but he said that “if I am leader we will be talking about jobs, we will be talking about wages, we will talking about the economy, we will be talking about pensions — bread and butter issues that people in rural issues and in industrial Midwest and down south care very much about. We’ve gotten off that message.”
So far Ryan has about a dozen public supporters within the caucus, which will include over 190 members in the next Congress, but still claims he is “within striking distance.”
Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, a supporter of Ryan’s, said he’s hearing about “an undercurrent of support” and told reporters the secret ballot “will surprise people.” He said that even if Ryan falls short, the Democrats will be “making a statement that the caucus is looking for accountability.”
Many of Pelosi’s allies say she has deep support and her record-breaking fundraising skills are a quality members need to be competitive in 2018. She has already proposed some reforms to caucus rules to respond to the push from newer members that there are few opportunities to advance.
Michigan Democratic Rep Dan Kildee told CNN he’s backing Pelosi, and praised her for leading the effort to deal with the contaminated water crisis in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. But he said it was good there was a contest about the party’s message, telling CNN, “I think this is a good debate for us to have.”