Pelosi Says She’ll Always Have Influence on House Democrats

Billy House
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’ll “always have influence” over Democrats in the US House, while declining to say whether she’ll seek another term as their top leader.

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“There are all kinds of ways to exert influence,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

With majority control of the House and her post as its first woman leader hanging in the balance, Pelosi said Democrats are “still alive” in the chamber as about 20 races remained uncalled on Sunday. So far, Republicans are projected to take 211 seats to 204 for the Democrats.

Pelosi, 82, wouldn’t predict whether Democrats could retain control of the 435-seat House in the new Congress that will be seated January. She said she was “disappointed” with the Democrats’ showing in some New York races, which included the defeat of Democratic Congressional Campaign Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney.

“We’re still alive,” Pelosi said, noting some outstanding races remain close. “Nobody expected we’d be this close. Well, we expected it.”

With President Joe Biden and his party celebrating Democrats’ retaining control of the Senate in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Pelosi said she thinks Biden should run for a second term.

“Yes, I do,” she said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “He has been a great president. He has a great record to run on.”

Pelosi declined to say whether she would run for caucus leader again in a closed-door party election this month. Some younger members have been calling for generational change.

“The fact is that any decision to run is about family and also my colleagues. What we want to do is go forward in a very unified way” as Democrats prepare for the new Congress in January, she said.

“The speaker has awesome power. But I will always have influence,” Pelosi said.

She took a swipe at House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy when asked about his ability to serve as speaker if the GOP seized the House majority. House Republicans are set to vote on their leadership on Tuesday.

“No, I don’t think he has it,” she said on CNN.

McCarthy faces dissatisfaction among some House Republicans, including those from the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, who say they won’t support him or are demanding party rule changes to shift some power to rank-and-file members.

Representative Jim Banks, head of the biggest conservative caucus in Congress, backed McCarthy on Sunday, saying the minority leader’s fundraising prowess helped put the GOP within reach of taking control of the House.

“His experience is what we need right now,” Banks, an Indiana Republican who’s in the running for the post of Republican whip, told “Fox News Sunday.”

(Updates with Republican lawmaker’s comments in final three paragraphs.)

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