Biden to time confirmation votes to protect majority
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to tap several House Democrats for administrative positions is putting Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a politically tough spot, having chiseled away at the party’s slimmed majority and leaving her potentially without enough votes to pass his legislative agenda.
Democrats already were heading into the new Congress with a razor-thin margin over Republicans.
But Mr. Biden’s tapping of a third Democratic lawmaker, New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland, as the first Native American interior secretary, set off a fresh round of pained conversations on what to do. Ms. Pelosi will start the Biden era with a narrow majority, 222-211, with a few races still undecided.
But Ms. Pelosi’s leadership team has a plan.
“We need to manage something like this,” Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the Democratic whip and a top Biden ally, said in an interview with The Associated Press this week.
According to Mr. Clyburn, an emerging strategy is to stagger the confirmations: Mr. Biden would hold off on formally submitting the nominations all at once so the Democrats’ House majority doesn’t immediately drop.
Under the plan, timing would unfold over the first several months of the new Congress — ample time for the House to pass the 100days agenda, a typically important but symbolic legislative sprint that takes on new importance aligned with Mr. Biden’s presidency.
Mr. Biden’s first pick from the House, Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., would join the administration quickly once the president-elect is inaugurated Jan. 20, Mr. Clyburn said. Mr. Richmond is poised to become a senior adviser, a position that doesn’t require confirmation by the Senate.
Mr. Biden would then wait to submit the other two nominations — Ms. Haaland and Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, who was tapped as housing secretary — until after the March special election in Louisiana to fill Mr. Richmond’s seat.
The lawmakers can remain in the House, voting as members, until they are confirmed by the Senate. Their nominations could be sent one after the other in the months that follow.
“Just manage it,” Mr. Clyburn said.
The three House seats are in Democratic strongholds and expected to be offlimits to Republicans.
But special elections can throw curveballs, and the staggered timing would also give the campaigns ample running room to shore up the candidates and races.
Democrats are already deep into political soulsearching after a dismal November outcome for House Democrats. Mr. Biden’s victory had short coattails as the party lost seats and saw its House majority shrink.
Moderate lawmakers and strategists blamed progressives for pushing the party’s message too far leftward; progressives complained it was moderates who ran timid campaigns without a bold message to attract voters.
Ms. Pelosi is a master vote-counter on the House floor, but even her skills will be tested in the new Congress, starting with her own election for another term as speaker.
If even a few Democratic lawmakers object or peel off, passing bills in the new Congress could be difficult.