Two Newly-Elected Progressives Decline to Say if They’ll Back Pelosi for Speaker By Brittany Bernstein
Representative-elect Cori Bush (D., Mo.) and Representative-elect Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.), both of whom are progressives, declined to say Sunday if they will vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker.
“I am going to make sure that voices of the people of St. Louis are heard and we have what we need. And so you will find out then,” Bush said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Host Dana Bush then asked Bowman, who said, “You will find out when my vote is tallied and, again, organizing with our community to figure out what’s best.”
Bush beat out Representative William Lacy Clay Jr. in August before handily winning election in November. Bowman defeated longtime New York Representative Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary in July.
Pelosi is looking to serve her fourth two-year term as Speaker of the House, where Democrats hold a small majority after losing ten seats in the November election. Meanwhile, some Democrats will leave their posts to hold positions in the Biden administration.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has emerged as the de facto spokeswoman for House progressives, criticized her party’s leadership in an interview earlier this month for refusing to cede power to a new generation of lawmakers.
“I do think that we need new leadership in the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said on The Intercept’s podcast Intercepted. However, there aren’t any alternative candidates for House leadership positions because the party didn’t invest in “real grooming of a next generation of leadership.”
“The structural shifts of power in the House…concentrate power in party leadership of both parties, frankly, but in the Democratic Party leadership to such a degree that an individual member has far less power than they did 30, 40, 50 years ago,” Ocasio-Cortez said. This causes “really talented members of Congress that do come along” to leave for other ventures.
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