As Democrats prepare to vote on who should be the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia won a key recommendation Monday night, positioning the second-term lawmaker as the official frontrunner ahead of Tuesday’s caucus-wide vote.
Garcia beat out Reps. Jasmine Crockett, Stephen Lynch and Kweisi Mfume for the Steering and Policy Committee endorsement during a private meeting Monday night — and he did it on the first ballot, after roughly 60 of the most senior and powerful House Democrats voted behind closed doors on who the group recommends to serve as Oversight’s ranking member.
He won 33 votes, compared to Lynch’s 15, Mfume’s eight and Crockett’s six, according to a source familar with the vote.
“I’m very grateful to the Steering and Policy Committee and had a chance to talk to almost the entire caucus one-on-one, directly,” Garcia said Monday night after the vote.
“There’s still an election tomorrow, and there’s still obviously an important case to be made in the morning, and that’s the case I’m planning on making,” Garcia added. “And so we’re going to run through the tape and I’m just very grateful.”
The Steering Committee’s stamp of approval is a key token in any leadership election, and it breathes new momentum into Garcia’s insurgent campaign, as the California Democrat seeks to leapfrog the more senior Lynch and Mfume. To do so, Garcia ran on his media chops and his ability to build coalitions within the Democrat Party — two skills that have quickly made him a prominent name in Democratic politics.
Ascending to the positition of top Democrat on Oversight supercharges any House member’s platform, handing them a loud microphone to counter GOP messaging on issues ranging from Department of Government Efficiency cuts and immigration crackdowns to investigations into former President Joe Biden’s mental fitness and the government’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Under former ranking member Jamie Raskin, Democrats on the Oversight panel took on a fiery, attention-grabbing ethos, marked by name-calling and prop-wielding. The more diplomatic Rep. Gerry Connolly took over for Raskin earlier this year after beating the better known, but more junior, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the top spot.
But since Connolly’s death in May, Democrats have been reckoning with whether they should reward seniority by selecting Lynch or Mfume, or whether they should go a different direction — with a younger, more media-savvy option like Crockett or Garcia. The Steering Committee’s selection indicates that the party may now be ready to elevate a fresher voice.
“I hear it all the time, ‘You guys aren’t doing enough. You’re not fighting enough,’” Rep. Becca Balint, who was deciding between Garcia and Crockett on Monday, told NOTUS. “So I trust each of them to be able to make the case to Americans about the things that we’re doing.”
Garcia’s candidacy has steadily picked up steam since he joined the race in May. He met with former speaker, and fellow Californian, Nancy Pelosi — still considered the party’s most gifted kingmaker — earlier this month.
He also won the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ endorsement. The win was no surprise given Garcia was the only candidate represented on the 42-member panel. But with no other major caucuses endorsing any Oversight option, the endorsement generated another round of Garcia buzz.
Still, the race isn’t over yet.
Steering member Rep. Don Beyer, who is whipping for Garcia, told NOTUS on Monday before the meeting that, while he felt good about where things stand, “I don’t have a clue how the vote goes right now.”
“Even in my little office, there’s like a four-way pool about who will be the first one out — who will be the second one out. Because our internal consensus is any of the four could be the first one,” Beyer said.
In an interview Monday afternoon with NOTUS, Crockett emphasized that she sees a “path to victory” even if she did not win the Steering endorsement. In the final hours of the race, she said she plans to detail to her colleagues that she’s a “lawyer lawyer” with a deep legal background that prepares her to tackle Oversight investigations.
“We think that the caucus understands my messaging ability as well as my fundraising ability,” Crockett said. But she added that her closing pitch would be about “really giving them more of the substance.”
Crockett emphasized that while she does not have traditional lines of support — the Congressional Black Caucus chose not to endorse her or Mfume — she has stitched together high-profile backers that she hopes can still help rally undecided Democrats behind her.
She told NOTUS that her nominators during the meeting Tuesday will be former Democratic Women’s Caucus Chair Lois Frankel, former Jan. 6 Select Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, Trump’s second impeachment manager, Rep. Eric Swalwell, and freshman Rep. Eugene Vindman.
“She brings energy, she brings intellect, she brings the ability to tackle oversight,” Thompson told NOTUS on Monday. “That is something a lot of us have missed since Elijah Cummings is no longer with us.”
Crockett’s candidacy has not been without challenges. She has built her brand around eye-popping Trump opposition that has turned her into one of the most well-known Democrats in the country. And yet, her outspoken nature has put off some Democrats — Beyer, for one, called her “flamboyant” — who are seeking a more measured communications style.
“There had been a lot of talk about not knowing if I was a team player,” Crockett said. “That was kind of the feedback I was getting from some of my whips. And I was like, ‘I don’t understand.’”
“I’ve done well over 100 events across this country on behalf of other people,” she added. “It wasn’t really laid out, what the ‘team player’ kind of thought process was. So that’s why we really leaned in. And I think that I’ve made it clear that, like, I’ve done a lot to help the caucus, in a lot of ways.”
Still, it might be too late to change the narrative on Crockett’s candidacy. She even acknowledged to NOTUS that Garcia is on strong footing, having lined up the CHC and many of his fellow Californians behind him.
“Robert will walk in with kind of like a solid base,” Crockett said. “I don’t know what will happen.”
It’s true that Garcia has consolidated support by being something of a political Goldilocks.
His current leadership positions suggest he’s already adept at navigating fraught internal Democratic politics that have bedeviled Crockett. And while Lynch and Mfume have the maturity of a combined 38 years in the House, some Democrats told NOTUS they lack the punch and quick wit required to break through against Trump in a crowded media landscape.
For members of the Steering Committee, at least, Garcia appears to be the best of both worlds.
But it’s still possible that the race becomes a rerun of Connolly and Ocasio-Cortez’s showdown last year.
In December, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign appeared to have legs until she was roundly defeated by Connolly supporters championing seniority politics. Around Capitol Hill, Ocasio-Cortez’s loss was interpreted as a slap on the wrist to ambitious, liberal media darlings seeking to cut the line in pursuit of power.
“We don’t do a lot of legislation on Oversight, but at our best we do a lot of Oversight investigations,” Lynch told NOTUS before Steering on Monday. “And between my work as an attorney before coming here and the work I’ve done since coming here, I’ve gotten pretty good at that.”
Plenty of Democrats told NOTUS that seniority will be a serious factor in their decisions tomorrow — essentially congressional shorthand for supporting Lynch or Mfume.
“I tend to be someone that honors seniority,” another ranking member, Rep. Mark Takano, told NOTUS before the Steering meeting.
Several other Democrats seem to agree. Reps. Jared Golden, Tom Suozzi and Marcy Kaptur — all vulnerable moderates — will nominate Lynch. Mfume will draw on support from his fellow Marylanders, telling NOTUS that freshman Reps. Sarah Elfreth and Johnny Olszewski are two of his nominators.
“The thing about this,” Mfume told NOTUS on Monday, “is that you never know until the vote.”
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.