Nancy Pelosi maintains House minority grip, despite losses

Rep. Tim Ryan is the latest Democrat to tangle with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and prognosticators say he’ll likely end up where the rest of them did: On the losing end.

The California Democrat says she already has support of two-thirds of House Democrats, and has strenuously made the case for sticking with her despite staggering losses over the last eight years, which have reduced her from House speaker to the head of a minority caucus in the less-influential chamber.

Mr. Ryan, Ohio Democrat, says it’s time for a change.

“I’m pulling the fire alarm here because the house is on fire and we need to do something,” Mr. Ryan said on MSNBC recently, saying the party is “in denial” about what happened in this year’s election.

But pointing to Democratic losses — the party has now lost a net of more than five dozen House seats since 2010 — has failed to sway in the past, and Mrs. Pelosi is betting it won’t work this time either.

Mrs. Pelosi first ascended to House party leadership by edging out Rep. Steny Hoyer, now her top lieutenant, in a hotly contested race for House minority whip in 2001, beating out Mr. Hoyer by a 118-95 vote. After the 2002 elections, Mrs. Pelosi defeated former Rep. Harold Ford to win the minority leader post, by a more sizable 177-29 vote.

She became speaker of the House following Democrats’ wins in the 2006 midterms, and after 2008, she helped shepherd through much of President Obama’s early legislative agenda along with then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

But after the party’s historic 2010 midterm losses, former Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina mounted a challenge against her to be the next minority leader, though even Mr. Shuler conceded his bid was little more than a symbolic gesture given the tightening grip on the caucus Mrs. Pelosi had developed by then.

“It wasn’t about winning or losing this race. It was about truly making a difference within our caucus, to ensure that the moderates were heard,” Mr. Shuler told reporters at the time.

Mrs. Pelosi won the intraparty contest against Mr. Shuler by a vote of 150-43 — a sizable margin that nevertheless revealed an undercurrent of discord within her ranks.

About 20 Democrats still ended up voting for someone other than Mrs. Pelosi for speaker on the House floor in early 2011. Of those dissenters, though, just a handful are still in Congress, as subsequent election cycles continue to reduce the moderate “Blue Dog” ranks the party used to build up its majorities in 2006 and 2008.

Mrs. Pelosi’s hold on her leadership post has a lot to do with her fundraising skills, considering the three mediocre cycles she’s overseen after the 2010 blowout, said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the political forecasting newsletter “Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball.”

“As Democrats move forward, they would be wise in the era of Trump to go back to the old Rahm Emanuel playbook and recruit middle-of-the-road candidates to compete in some moderate or conservative districts,” Mr. Kondik said. “But that may be harder now than it was a decade ago because the country as a whole seems more polarized.”

Mr. Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and former congressman, headed up House Democrats’ campaign arm under Mrs. Pelosi during the 2006 cycle. He later became White House chief of staff under Mr. Obama.

But the prospect of looking to new leadership is unlikely in the short term, said Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, who served in the Carter administration.

“Nancy Pelosi [has] led them, since 2008, to a string of disasters — yet she’s favored to win because of the ideological extremities in the House,” Mr. Caddell said on Fox Business Network.

Approximately one-third of the Democratic members who take office in January will hail from three coastal states, all of them reliably blue: New York, Massachusetts and Mrs. Pelosi’s California.

Mr. Ryan now has at least two public backers.

Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York said it’s clear Mr. Ryan is focused on standing up to President-elect Donald Trump and making Democratic leadership more accountable to the rank-and-file.

“He’s the one forcing us to ask the tough questions about our party’s future, and he’s the one providing real answers,” she said.

Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio joined the dissidents Wednesday, saying that “now is the right time for new leadership” in part because “Democrats have experienced significant losses in the House and Senate, yet Members have been asked for little to no input to address the reasons for these losses.”

In addition to the 2001 whip race, Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer were on opposite sides in 2006, when Mr. Hoyer edged out Rep. Jack Murtha, Mrs. Pelosi’s favored candidate, for the majority leader post.

Since then, though, Mr. Hoyer has been a loyal lieutenant, and announced recently he was seeking another term as her second-in-command.

Mrs. Pelosi bragged recently that without asking anyone for a vote, she’d have the support of more than two-thirds of her conference to stay on as minority leader despite the party’s underwhelming net of just six House seats.

“It’s a funny thing in a caucus or any place when somebody challenges you, your supporters turn out both internally in the caucus and in the country whether it’s supporters at the grass-roots level, financial supporters, intellectual resources,” she said.

Mrs. Pelosi has also won recent support from advocacy groups who have an eye toward women in politics, such as Emily’s List and Feminist Majority, who are looking to rebound after Hillary Clinton missed her chance to become the first female president.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, New York Democrat, complimented Mrs. Pelosi’s work ethic and said a good “conductor” will provide an opportunity for various sides to engage in dialogue and conversation.

“And the conductor listens to what that is, and I think that’s what we’re doing now, and as I’ve witnessed in the meetings that we’ve had, Nancy has been listening,” Mr. Meeks said on CNN recently.