Pelosi: ‘I Have a Following,’ Though Dozens of Other Dems Would Beg to Differ

While a growing number of Democrats — both already elected officials and those seeking office this fall — have publicly said they cannot and would not be supporting Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for a continued leadership role in the Democrat Party in November, the House minority leader herself is saying she doesn’t see the issue and that she’s not going anywhere.

“This is not anything to make a big fuss over. It’s politics,” Pelosi said in a new interview with the Associated Press. “I can take the heat, and that’s why I stay in the kitchen.”

She also told AP in a phone interview that Democrats would push forward legislation this fall on background checks for gun purchases and legal status for young immigrants brought to this country illegally.

“We’re ready,” she said.

But maybe others aren’t quite where she is on this. The results of a recent poll show that among those on the Left, just 50 percent approve of the current minority leader’s retaining a prominent role in the party — while 49 percent say she should be replaced as leader. That’s according to an American Barometer poll released by Hill.TV and HarrisX, as The Hill reported.

The same poll found that just 27 percent of Americans believe the Democratic Party should keep Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as a leader in the fall.

A number of Democrats have publicly stated that if the Democrats take back the House in the fall, they are not in favor of her leadership and would fight for a change. Vox has counted 42 Democrats already on record as not supporting her, while a recent NBC News survey found that more than 50 Democrats running for the House, including nine incumbents, said they would not support Pelosi for speaker.

Here are 12 of the Democrats — in no particular order — who have gone on the record with their thoughts about why they can’t support her leadership.

1.) Conor Lamb, even before winning a March special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th District against GOP candidate Rick Saccone, said he would not support Pelosi.

Lamb, 33, said back in January 2018, “It’s clear that this Congress is not working for people … We need new leadership on both sides.” He also said, “It’s more about the fact that I expect leaders to get results, and the result of our congressional leadership has been to have people in the district dissatisfied with their performance,” as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

2.) Jared Goldstein, a state representative in Lewiston, Maine, who is campaigning in the state’s 2nd District, said in early June at a public forum in South Paris, sponsored by the Oxford County Democrats, that it’s time for leaders such as Nancy Pelosi to move on and hand over the reins to newcomers, as the Sun-Journal noted.

Goldstein said he has “no intention of voting for Nancy Pelosi [as a leader of the party]. None at all.”

3.) Kathy Manning of Greensboro, North Carolina, announced in early July she would not support Pelosi as a Democratic leader. Manning is challenging first-term GOP Rep. Ted Budd of Davie County in her state’s 13th District, which includes Greensboro, High Point, Statesville and Salisbury.

“I cannot vote for more of the same, and I cannot support Nancy Pelosi or Paul Ryan to lead Congress,” Manning wrote on Medium, as the News & Observer reported. “We need fresh faces and bold ideas leading both parties.” (Paul Ryan is not running for re-election.)

4.) Rashida Tlaib, a Muslim who is running for a Michigan House seat, said recently that if elected, she likely would not vote for Pelosi to retain a leadership position. “No, probably not,” she said recently on CNN’s “New Day.”

Tlaib said the long-time California lawmaker is not connected with different levels of poverty, as The Washington Times reported. “Even people right here at home in Detroit, in the metro Detroit area, feel like they aren’t being heard. I feel that starts at the top with leadership.”

5.) Ben McAdams, who is running in Utah’s closely watched congressional race — he is the mayor of Salt Lake County — said in a statement in May that he would not support Pelosi for speaker of the House if the Dems were to regain control, AP reported. McAdams is going up against two-term Rep. Mia Love.

6.) Liz Watson, who is challenging incumbent GOP Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana in the state’s 9th District, said on July 29 that if elected, she won’t back the House minority leader.

As Watson told CBS 4 in Indianapolis, “We need new leadership in Washington. I’ve been out across the district listening to folks, and they know that Washington is broken. They know that it is a system that needs to change.”

7.) Clarke Tucker, the Democratic nominee in Arkansas’s 2nd District, declared in a TV commercial that “I’ve said from day one that I won’t vote for Nancy Pelosi,” according to Fox News. The 2nd Congressional District includes Little Rock and seven central Arkansas counties.

8.) Max Rose, the Democratic nominee in New York’s 11th Congressional District and a 31-year-old Army veteran, told CBS News late last month he would not vote for the current House Democratic leader.

Rose is going up against GOP Rep. Dan Donovan in the New York City congressional district that President Donald Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. Rose’s district includes Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

“I believe that the Democratic Party is in urgent need of new leadership,” said Rose. “The party has lost the trust of voters, not only in my district, but throughout the country, and believe me, if you separate the parties and you just look at our policies — infrastructure, equitable growth, lowering per capita health care costs — those policies have massive support. But we’ve got to move [toward] being also a party that can garner people’s trust and keep it, and we’re not going to accomplish that without new leadership.”

9.) Dan McCready, the Democratic nominee in North Carolina’s 9th District, said earlier this spring, “It’s time for a change, and that starts at the top,” as Fox News noted. He also said, “The fact is leaders of both parties have let us down.”

10.) Dan Kohl, the Democratic challenger in Wisconsin’s 6th District, told Fox6 back in April that “if I’m elected to Congress, I would not vote for Nancy Pelosi as leader of the Democrats.”

11.) Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey state senator running for Congress in his state’s 2nd District, said of Pelosi in a statement, “We need to change the leadership in Washington. After more than a decade of leading House Democrats as speaker and minority leader, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi will not have my support as leader in the next session,” as the Press of Atlantic City noted. He’s been a dentist for more than 35 years and lives in Cape May County.

12.) Mikie Sherrill, who is running for Congress in New Jersey’s 11th District, said during a recent debate that she would not back Nancy Pelosi as speaker if the Democrats win the House in November. “The next 50 years are not going to look like the last 50 years. We need new leadership, and it starts at the top,” Sherrill told InsiderNJ.

Prior to the debate in Livingston, New Jersey, Sherrill had not said publicly whether she would or wouldn’t support Pelosi. She is a Naval Academy graduate, a mother of four, and a former federal prosecutor — and she’s going up against Republican Jay Webber, a state assemblyman, this fall.