«a resounding and surprising defeat for progressives…»
Behind the scenes, House Democrats have been quietly lobbying their colleagues to support their bids for key committee assignments. One of the key assignments up for grabs was a seat on the Energy and Commerce committee which overseas both health care and climate change. The first person to announce she would try to get support from other members for the assignment was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. After all, if your priorities are the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, this is the perfect assignment from which to push both of those. However, AOC had some competition from a moderate member of the NY delegation, Rep. Kathleen Rice. Both Rice and AOC have spent the last couple of weeks arguing their case for why they deserve the assignment in preparation for a vote this week. When Democrats got together to vote, Speaker Pelosi announced her preferred assignments for four of the five available assignments. There was some pushback but eventually Pelosi got her way and Democrats decided not to even vote on those four. But Pelosi didn’t select anyone for the 5th committee assignment, the one to be filled by a New York member. That set up a showdown between Rep. Rice and AOC, with moderate House members arguing the assignment should go to someone who paid their party dues and who hadn’t tried to primary incumbent members. In other words, they argued that it shouldn’t go to AOC. Rice and Ocasio-Cortez have been battling behind the scenes for weeks to secure one of the few open seats on the exclusive committee, which oversees everything from health care policy to climate issues.
