Ohio Dem to challenge Pelosi for minority leader

ANDREA MITCHELL: And in another sign of democratic disarray after their losses, longtime House Leader Nancy Pelosi is now being challenged for the first time by an OH congressman, Tim Ryan, from the kind of rustbelt district Donald Trump won overwhelmingly.

The Democrats’ shellacking in the election – below-expectations gains in the House plus the White House loss and minimal wins in the Senate – produced party grumbling that the 76-year-old California liberal may not be the best messenger to lead those once-core Democratic voters back into the fold.

Democrats will decide then whether House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will retain her long-held position as Democratic leader for another two years. They argue under her leadership the party lost touch with the working-class electorate that voted for President Barack Obama but broke for the Republican last week.

Pelosi, in her letter, said she’s “deeply grateful” for the feedback she’s heard from members since the elections, vowing to tap their “wisdom and leadership” in designing a vision and strategy in the next Congress. “States like OH don’t have the kind of representation … that we need to take the majority back”.

Pelosi of San Francisco already has lined up strong support for her re-election and wasn’t willing to change a scheduled Thursday leadership vote.

Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan announced Thursday he will challenge Pelosi for minority leader. They elected us to fight for their jobs, families and futures. “We must start now!” “As of this writing, I am pleased to report the support of more than two-thirds of the Caucus”, she wrote in the letter. She has since clung to power as House Minority Leader by the strength of her fundraising acumen. We won the White House in 2012 and lost everything else. On the other side of the aisle, meanwhile, Democrats made a decision to postpone their leadership nomination vote until after Thanksgiving so they can mull the direction they want to take going forward. Democrats earlier this week delayed leadership elections until November 30, amid consternation over the party’s failure to win control of either chamber of Congress on Election Day.

In the 2012 election, President Obama won Trumbull County with 60.5 percent of the vote, with nearly 62,000 total votes.

“I’m very proud to have the opportunity, I know how to do it, to get it done”, she said.

And it continued: “And Crowley, who’s very close to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Democratic whip, is highly unlikely to attempt to leapfrog the No. 2 Democrat by taking on Pelosi”. Israel is retiring at the end of the year.

But more rank-and-file members are saying that should be considered the agenda of the Democratic Party and that it is time for a new direction.

So far, no Democrat has formally taken a step to challenge Pelosi but the party might ultimately tap a Ryan of their own – Ohio Rep. A group of members, including New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell, signed a letter requesting that leadership elections be postponed. But the campaign in 2018 is going to be about Trump and Republicans controlling Congress.