Minorities powerful in Pelosi’s majority
WASHINGTON — Nearly every night last year, sometimes nearing midnight, Michelle Lujan Grisham’s phone would ring late. On the line would be Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Sometimes, the San Francisco Democrat would call again at 6 a.m. to update Lujan Grisham, a New Mexico Democrat who was then the chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, on House negotiations involving immigration and border security.
“Really,” said Lujan Grisham, now the governor of New Mexico. “To her credit.”
The calls were a reflection of how seriously Pelosi, now the House speaker, and other Democratic leaders take the influence of the Hispanic caucus and two counterpart groups that represent black and Asian Pacific American lawmakers. Pelosi’s No. 2, Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., even helped Lujan Grisham crash an immigration meeting with President Trump, taking her to the White House unannounced as part of his entourage.
It’s a relationship that Pelosi will need to maintain as she presides over the Democratic House majority this year. After all, as Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono, a former representative and member of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, put it: “Nancy knows how to count.”
More than 100 of 235 Democratic members in the new House, many from California, belong to one of the three affinity groups known collectively as the Tri-Caucus. It will arguably be the most powerful voting bloc for the Democratic
majority.
The growth in the groups’ membership — in the last Congress, the Tri-Caucus had roughly 90 core House members — reflects the diverse lineup of Democrats who won election in the November midterms. It also signals that their influence will be wide-ranging.
Among the Tri-Caucus members will be eight committee chairs, leading panels ranging from environmental issues to homeland security to small business. They will have representatives in the No. 3, 4 and 5 spots in Democratic leadership. Lobbying firms in Washington are hiring staff with connections to the Tri-Caucus, a signal of their importance.
The groups’ chairs, two of whom represent California districts, said in interviews that they plan to work together to shape legislation, speak up for often-overlooked communities and show people of color that there is a place for them in Washington.
“We’re going to be active on just about every policy area that this House of Representatives will concern itself with,” said Rep. Joaquín Castro, DTexas, now chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Pelosi has already committed to convene weekly meetings between leadership and the chairs of the Tri-Caucus groups. During her successful campaign to reclaim the speaker’s gavel, Pelosi sat down with each of the groups — and made promises to them.
She told the Hispanic caucus that she would call for a vote on the Dream Act, which would make permanent the protections that young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors were granted under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. That bill is also a priority for the Asian Pacific American Caucus.
Pelosi said the House would vote quickly on legislation to reinstate some provisions of the Voting Rights Act that were negated in a 2013 Supreme Court decision, a priority of the black caucus. She also has backed Tri-Caucus members for leadership and selective committee spots.
The groups that make up the Tri-Caucus have solidified their cooperation the past two years in response to Trump administration policies on immigration and civil rights issues. A key moment came in January 2018 when Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., convened a conference call to sell fellow Hispanic caucus members on a Senate-negotiated DACA-border security deal. It would have extended protection for DACA recipients and incorporated some White House demands for limits on two vehicles for legal immigration — a “diversity lottery” for entrance to the U.S. from countries with few immigrants, and restrictions on immigrants’ ability to sponsor relatives for U.S. entry.
Those were particularly sensitive proposals for the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American caucus. The diversity lottery is the main source of migration to the U.S. from sub-Saharan Africa and a major driver of immigration from Asia, and family visas are also extensively used by Asian immigrants. But at stake were protections for DACA recipients — a priority for the Hispanic caucus.
Members of the Tri-Caucus were considering a compromise — and then Trump rejected Menendez’s brokered deal in a now-infamous White House meeting in which the president denigrated immigration from “s—hole countries.” The groups decided then that they would not endorse the Senate deal even if it could pass that chamber.
“Accepting any element of that truly would have pitted one of our groups against the other,” said Rep. Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park (Los Angeles County), chairwoman of the Asian Pacific American caucus.
Leaders of the three groups said the unsuccessful deal was an example of the way the White House has taken a divide-and-conquer approach to communities of color.
“Those are all different subjects that the Trump administration would certainly like to get everybody fighting about. And no one took the bait,” said the Congressional Black Caucus’ chairwoman, Democratic Rep. Karen Bass of Los Angeles. “That was total unity. There was no interest from the Latino caucus to move forward.”
It was also a learning experience for Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who was working with Menendez on the deal.
“On immigration, I couldn’t make a move without them, and when it came to criminal justice reform, the same thing is true,” Durbin said of the Tri-Caucus. “I can allay a lot of fears by getting to them early and explaining some of the things that are happening before they’re mischaracterized.”
While immigration may be where the Tri-Caucus is most visible, the coalition has been instrumental in shaping Democrats’ stances on other issues.
The cooperation of the TriCaucus as a bloc goes back at least to the Obama administration, when the groups were key influences in shaping the Affordable Care Act. For more than a decade, the three caucuses have taken turns introducing the Health Equity and Accountability Act, which would create programs intended to improve access to mental and physical health care for communities of color and tighten federal law on discrimination in care.
All three groups’ chairs say one of their biggest priorities is ensuring that underrepresented perspectives contribute not just to policymaking, but to the broader culture.
“Part of it is reclaiming your place in American society,” Castro said. “That’s not a piece of legislation necessarily, or a policy, but it’s important that that emanate from this caucus.”
Castro has served on the high-profile and selective Intelligence Committee, making him a frequent TV guest on national security issues and the Russia investigation. The significance of that is not lost on him.
“Growing up, I would turn on the TV and you’d look at the people commenting on the news and you would never see anybody that looks like you,” Castro said. “Hopefully, young people know that they have a place in this country in every aspect of the country.”
Bass said one of her priorities is making it clear to media outlets that caucus members can be more than token talking heads. That’s still an uphill climb, she said. Several members of the black caucus are active in criminal justice reform, for example, but when Bass watched a recent cable news report on the issue, she was angry to see the host interviewing a rapper.
“You don’t get called on to be in the press, you call the media and say, ‘Hey, I’d like to come on your show and talk about X, Y, Z,’ ” Bass said. “You turn on cable TV, and they’re talking to the same five white guys on almost every show.”
Chu said she remembers when all the Asian Americans in Congress “could fit in a phone booth” — there are now 20 Asian American or Pacific Islander members of Congress — and pictures of the Democratic caucus were overwhelmingly white and male.
“There were these sprinklings of people of color there, so of course they had to struggle to stop being marginalized,” Chu said. “Nobody would marginalize us now.”