Pelosi’s One Potential Rival Cuts Deal and Drops Speaker Challenge

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/us/politics/nancy-pelosi-marcia-fudge-house-speaker.html

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WASHINGTON — And then there were none.

A Democratic insurgency seeking to force Representative Nancy Pelosi to abandon her bid for speaker and install a fresh crop of leaders at the helm of their new majority suffered a setback on Tuesday, when Representative Marcia L. Fudge, the sole lawmaker to flirt openly with a challenge, dropped the idea and endorsed her.

Ms. Fudge’s sudden reversal was the result of a swift and relentless bit of deal-cutting by Ms. Pelosi, a legendary negotiator and vote-counter who has insisted that she will have the support to claim the speaker’s gavel despite a rebellion in Democratic ranks.

It sent a group of dissidents who released a letter on Monday calling for new leadership back to the drawing board to find a Democrat willing to directly challenge Ms. Pelosi, 78, who has led her party for 15 years, handily dispatching would-be challengers along the way.

Ms. Fudge, who is African-American, said she had changed her mind after Ms. Pelosi gave her the opportunity to play a key role in safeguarding voting rights and assured her that black women would “have a seat at the decision-making table” in the new Congress.

“My consideration was due in large part to the lack of sustained efforts that ensure diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of the House,” Ms. Fudge said in a statement circulated by Ms. Pelosi’s aides. “I am now confident that we will move forward together and that the 117th Congress will be a Congress of which we can all be proud.”

Two minutes earlier, Ms. Pelosi released a statement of her own, announcing that she intended to reinstate an elections subcommittee that Republicans eliminated in 2013 and name Ms. Fudge as its chairwoman, handing her “a critical role in our Democratic majority’s efforts to ensure access to the ballot box for all Americans.”

Ms. Fudge said that this month’s elections clearly demonstrated the need to strengthen election protections, and the new post would allow her to work to reinstate voting protections struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.

“The erosion of voting rights and civil rights was on full display in Georgia, Florida, North Dakota, Ohio and Texas,” said Ms. Fudge, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus who previously served as mayor of Warrensville Heights, a predominantly African-American suburb of Cleveland. “Our party should reflect the diversity of our changing nation and guarantee all our citizens the unfettered right to vote and to have every vote count.”

Her turnabout came after several days of quiet conversation with Ms. Pelosi, who hosted her for a 45-minute meeting on Friday in her Capitol office suite. Ms. Fudge emerged saying she would decide over the Thanksgiving holiday whether to pursue the speakership, but on Monday, her name was conspicuously absent from the letter calling for new leaders, which she had originally signed.

On Tuesday, Ms. Fudge’s prospects appeared to dim when it was revealed that she wrote a letter in 2015 pleading for leniency for Lance Mason, a former state lawmaker and judge in Ohio, after he was convicted of brutally beating his wife in front of their two daughters, and who is now the prime suspect in her killing.

But in the end, the issue was moot; Ms. Pelosi had already struck a bargain with Ms. Fudge that removed her from the running for speaker.