By Joshua Arnold
The Washington Stand
As House lawmakers choose new leaders for the next Congress, one newly promoted Democrat immediately declared war upon the Trump administration’s agenda. On Tuesday, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) won election as the new Ranking Member — the highest position for the minority party — of the powerful House Oversight Committee. In announcing his new role, Connolly promised “trench warfare” against “the Republican playbook,” the Trump administration, and efforts to pare back Democrats’ excessive spending.
Connolly “is going to use every procedural tool he can to slow down whatever we’re trying to do to accomplish the Make America First agenda,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “He’s going to try to adjourn meetings. … He’s going to make sure everybody on his side talks for five minutes, to try to make it painful for us to enact our policies. … His side is going to really try to use the floor rules to stall bills and prevent us from accomplishing what we want to.”
For his part, Biggs didn’t feel threatened by Connolly’s announcement. “It’s a procedural tactic. We did a few of those things ourselves,” he said. “The reality is, we’re going to be ready for them.” The old adage states that all is fair in love and war, and political veterans often feel like politics qualifies as the latter. “Politics often feels like a battlefield, and it often is,” said Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice, a former congressman from Georgia.
Conservative veterans of Congress are not surprised that Democrats are dedicated to opposing Trump’s agenda, but they were surprised that Democrats selected Connolly as their standard bearer to do so. “I was kind of shocked that he got this position,” said Hice. “He was just diagnosed about a month ago with cancer. In fact, I reached out to him, texted him and let him know I’m praying for him.” Connolly, age 74, announced his esophageal cancer diagnosis on November 7.
In the Tuesday vote, Democratic lawmakers chose Connolly over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), 35, by a 131-84 vote.
In some ways, Connolly’s victory signifies a Democratic establishment victory against a younger, more progressive insurgency within the party. Indeed, Connolly represents wealthy D.C. suburbs inhabited by many federal employees, associating him closely with the swamp Trump has vowed to drain. Beyond that, Connolly has simply been in politics for a very long time; he first held public office while Ocasio-Cortez was in elementary school. For many party leaders in Congress, “he’s been the ranking member-in-waiting,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).
In other ways, however, Connolly’s victory could simply represent the Democrats’ preference for a progressive agenda in a traditional suit. Democratic primary goers selected Joe Biden as their standard bearer in 2020 because his old-school schtick appeared less radical, but they still expected him to advance the full slate of policies advanced by the party’s left-wing. Likewise, Connolly promises to block Trump’s agenda as vigorously as Ocasio-Cortez would have done, without attracting the same notoriety from right-wing media ecosystems.
“I think that they did some serious analysis and started trying to figure who is going to be … the best person who can articulate their message, who can try to advance their agenda, who’s best equipped to stop our agenda,” suggested Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.). “And it didn’t take them long to figure out that Miss Cortez is not the person who’s going to be able to do that.” As Democrats process the implications of the 2024 election, “some of the more radical leftists, the self-declared socialists of the Democratic Party, are not able to obtain those high-ranking positions” in Congress, he noted.
To the extent that Democratic members of Congress are thinking in the terms of identity politics, they are willing to “moderate” by elevating an older, white man above a younger, minority woman. But they are not willing to moderate by watering down their progressive agenda. They made this calculation in selecting Joe Biden in 2020, and some partisans have blamed Harris’s loss on America’s “racism” and “sexism,” alleging that Democrats could have won in 2024 if they had nominated a white man.
“The Democrats didn’t get the memo on November 5th, and they don’t understand that it wasn’t about the candidate,” declared Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “The American people don’t want their radical agenda.”
However, Good did spot a silver lining in Connolly’s commitment to fight tooth-and-nail against the Trump agenda. “I hope Gerry Connolly making this statement sends a message to Republicans across our conference that we are truly at war,” he said. “This is political warfare. The future of the country is at stake. And I hope Republicans bring their guns to this battle.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
