Nancy Pelosi rebuffs Democrats antsy to change

For San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi, there’s nothing new about being targeted by Republicans. After 30 years in Congress and 15 years as leader of the House Democrats, it comes with the territory.

But since a devastating June 20 loss for an open House seat in the Atlanta suburbs capped a 0-for-4 run in GOP-friendly special elections, the 77-year-old Pelosi has found herself taking fire from fellow Democrats who argue that the famously liberal minority leader is just too controversial — and add, in whispers, too old — to effectively remain the face of the party.

“We can’t keep losing races and keep the same leadership in place,” said Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York, who hosted a meeting of about a dozen dissident Democrats in her office last week. “You have a baseball team that keeps losing year after year. At some point the coach has to go, right?”

Texas Rep. Filemon Vela was even more direct.

“I think you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Nancy Pelosi on top,” Vela said in a Politico interview.

Pelosi’s answer has been simple. She’s not going anywhere, she said, so bring it on.

“When it comes to personal ambition, having fun on TV — have your fun,” she said in an undisguised shot at her Democratic opponents at a news conference last week. “I love the arena. I thrive on competition.”

There’s little argument that with former President Barack Obama and defeated 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gone from the political landscape, Pelosi — and the liberal city she represents — has become the go-to bogeyman for Republican campaigns across the country.

In the race for the Georgia congressional seat, for example, voters could barely turn on their televisions or open their mailboxes without learning how 30-year-old Democrat Jon Ossoff, who was born in that district, was nothing more than a stalking horse for Pelosi and her “San Francisco values.”

One 30-second TV spot, for example, featured a huge Pelosi-Ossoff banner hanging from the Golden Gate Bridge and a hipster-looking guy enthusiastically saying, “Ossoff and Pelosi. That’s a dream team!”

And then there was the mailer that showed a sinister-looking Pelosi pulling off a rubber Ossoff mask. “Behind Jon Ossoff is Nancy Pelosi ... Only YOUR vote can STOP them,” the ad read.

If voters in that Georgia district, once represented by former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, were more intent on voting against Pelosi than for Republican Karen Handel, the eventual winner, that’s no problem for Republican leaders.

Pelosi “continues to be a huge liability for Democratic candidates,” Corry Bliss, executive director of the Republicans’ Congressional Leadership Fund, said in a memo released Tuesday. His group, which spent more than $6 million on the Georgia attack ads, “will spend millions of dollars highlighting Nancy Pelosi’s toxic agenda and reminding voters across the country that Democratic candidates are nothing more than rubber stamps for her out-of-touch, liberal policies.”

Pelosi’s backers were quick to dismiss Bliss’ plan, arguing that four special election wins in deep-red districts in strong Republican states like Georgia, Montana, Kansas and South Carolina don’t make a trend.

“There is no evidence to suggest this strategy works,” said Jorge Aguilar, a spokesman on Pelosi’s political team. “Desperation is not a strategy.”

But in at least those four special elections, tying Democrats to Pelosi worked.

“That’s an old trick. (Former Assembly Speaker) Willie Brown was used in exactly the same way” by California Republicans, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a professor of public policy communication at the University of Southern California. “Parties will alway find someone to be a target. For Democrats now, it’s Donald Trump. Like it or not, it’s politics.”

But for House Democrats, those results are hard to ignore, especially when they’re accompanied by a taunting tweet from Trump saying: “I certainly hope the Democrats do not force Nancy P out. That would be very bad for the Republican Party.” And things like an electronic “card” from the California Republican Party thanking Pelosi for being “such a wonderful contributor to Republican victories!”

“The issue I think strategically is that Trump energizes their (Republican) base, and Leader Pelosi energizes their base,” Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged Pelosi for the House leadership last November, told The Associated Press.

That focus on Pelosi effectively nationalizes the local congressional races and takes the focus off the hometown candidates battling on issues that directly affect voters in those districts.

Still, it’s a hard call for Democrats to talk about ousting a longtime party leader because Republicans are saying bad things about her, especially when whoever leads the Democrats instantly becomes a GOP target.

Republicans “always want to choose our leaders. And usually they go after the most effective leaders,” Pelosi said at last week’s news conference. “But I don’t think that members of a party should pick up the line of the Republicans.”

With congressional primaries across the nation beginning in less than a year and fewer than 18 months before the November 2018 midterms, the last thing Democrats need is internecine battle that could shatter the party just when it most needs unity to win the 24 GOP seats needed to take control of Congress, said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at Stanford University.

“The real problem for the Democrats is who is going to moderate between the (Vermont Sen. Bernie) Sanders and the Clinton factions,” he said. Replacing Pelosi with a more centrist leader would mean “the cleavage between the two groups is only going to grow larger.”

Besides Pelosi’s unparalleled ability to raise the type of campaign cash Democrats will desperately need in next year’s congressional contests, the San Francisco congresswoman also has an ability to serve as a unifying force for Democrats that no one else can match, Cain added.

“That’s where Nancy’s unique contribution is,” he said. As the daughter of a former Baltimore mayor who also served in Congress, Pelosi “was raised to play the inside game. But at the same time she’s one of the most liberal and progressive Democrats ... someone able to deal with both the centrists and pragmatists, and the idealists and the progressives.”

That could be one of the reasons that, despite the grumbling, no strong candidate has talked seriously about challenging her. The most likely contender, 55-year-old Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York City, is No. 4 in the party hierarchy and turned down calls to take on Pelosi last November.

Since party rules make it nearly impossible to challenge a Democratic leader before the end of the two-year congressional term, even those most eager for change are resigned to standing behind Pelosi through the 2018 elections. Even Rice, the New York congresswoman, now says that all she wants to do is start a conversation about new leadership.

But after the election, all bets are off.

“If we take the House back in 2018, then I think she’d stay leader,” Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, told the Associated Press. “If we don’t, then I think it’s incumbent upon her and all of us to reassess who our leadership should be.”