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Pelosi: No decision yet on future plans after massive party losses
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she’s not ready to decide if she’ll remain in Congress after the Democrats’ drubbing at the polls.
In her first public interview since Tuesday’s elections returned the House majority to Republicans, the California Democrat told ABC News she’s still mulling her future in Washington.
Pelosi hinted, however, that the decision could hinge most significantly on the sentiments of fellow Democrats.
“In our caucus we always do things by consensus,” said the 70-year-old Pelosi. “And when we have that consensus, we’ll have some announcement to make.”
Echoing Tuesday’s defense of the Democrats’ legislative record, Pelosi also indicated that, given the chance, she wouldn’t do anything differently.
“No regrets,” she told Sawyer. “We believe we did the right thing, and we worked very hard in our campaigns to convey that to the American people.”
Speculation about Pelosi’s future has swirled around Capitol Hill — and around the country — since it became apparent Tuesday night that Republicans would regain a House majority after just four years of Democratic control. The shift ends Pelosi’s historic stint as the first female House Speaker.
Meanwhile, the decimated Democratic Caucus is in “a holding pattern” until it gets a signal from Pelosi, one Democratic aide said Wednesday. That marks quite a contrast from House Republicans, who are publicly jockeying for leadership posts in the 112th Congress.
With the party losing more than 60 seats Tuesday, many Democrats expect Pelosi to step down from her leadership post, allowing room for current Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) to head the caucus. Some observers say that exodus might happen sooner than later.
The Republicans did “a masterful job” of creating a negative brand out of Pelosi, one Democratic strategist and former congressional staffer said. For that reason, the strategist added, she might step down before the end of the year “so the negative branding doesn’t carry on into the next Congress” — a sentiment echoed by another former Democratic House staffer Wednesday.
In that case, the strategist speculated, the trick for Pelosi and the Democrats would be to make the exit as low-profile as possible — perhaps during the Christmas break, when Capitol Hill is a ghost town and the holiday provides a distraction
The role for the soon-to-be-ex-Speaker in the meantime, the strategist said, will be largely “to direct her supporters through the post-Pelosi era” — a delicate task for a liberal group sometimes wary of the more conservative Hoyer.
Julian Zelizer, congressional historian at Princeton University, said Pelosi’s future in Congress is anyone’s guess. Although there’s sure to be plenty of pressure on the California liberal to step down in the wake of Tuesday’s landslide, he said, she’s not the object of the kind of animosity that dogged past outgoing Speakers, such as former Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
That’s especially the case considering at least 27 of the 53 members of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition won’t be returning to Washington next year. (Five retired, 22 were defeated Tuesday and three others are in races too close to call.)
“Leaders often are disposable when things go bad,” Zelizer said. “But a lot of the conservatives who didn’t like her aren’t coming back.”
Pelosi on Wednesday called House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who’s poised to become Speaker next year, leaving “a very nice voice mail,” Boehner told reporters.
“I expect that we will have a very smooth transition with her office,” he added.
Meanwhile,
there were appearances that it was business as usual in Pelosi’s office
Wednesday. An hour before the interview aired, the office issued a
statement cheering the approval of a pilot program designed to help
California enroll uninsured residents under the new healthcare reform
law.
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