Freshman House Dems Vote With Pelosi, AOC More Than 90 Percent of the Time

Freshman House Dems Vote With Pelosi, AOC More Than 90 Percent of the Time
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) answers questions during her weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 27, 2019. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Mark Tapscott
Updated:
WASHINGTON—Forty-three freshmen Democrats are among Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s most reliable allies, voting to support her position 95.99 percent of the time during their first six months in Congress, according to an analysis released July 10.

“The new Democrat Majority Makers have voted with Pelosi, on average, 95.99 percent of the time. Moreover, 22 Democrat Majority Makers have voted with Pelosi 100 percent of the time,” said the Club for Growth (CFG), a conservative political activist group.

“While many candidates said they would be voting against Pelosi for speaker, they are shunning any perceived independence and voting with her on every issue of substance,” CFG stated.

The CFG study looked at 430 roll call votes taken in the House since the 116th Congress convened in January 2019.

The 43 freshmen Democrats are described by CFG as “Majority Makers” because they were key to the Republicans’ loss of the House majority in the 2018 congressional election.

Many of the 43 said before the 2018 election that they would either vote against Pelosi for speaker or declared they would be independent of her.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), for example, promised during the 2018 campaign that “under no circumstances would I vote for Nancy Pelosi to again be speaker.” She defeated Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Brat.

Spanberger did, in fact, oppose Pelosi for speaker, but since that Jan. 3 vote in the House, the Virginia Democrat has voted with the House leader more than 92 percent of the time.

Similarly, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said during the campaign that he “won’t be supporting Nancy Pelosi.” Crow voted against Pelosi for speaker, but he has since voted with her more than 96 percent of the time.

Overall, 32 of the 43 freshmen voted to return the speaker’s gavel to Pelosi eight years after Republicans, led by the Tea Party movement, won the House majority in the 2010 election.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), in the biggest upset of the 2018 election cycle, defeated long-time incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary.

Ocasio-Cortez is a self-proclaimed democratic socialist whose Green New Deal proposal would ban internal combustion autos and bovine flatulence because the world will end in 12 years if the alleged global warming crisis isn’t immediately addressed.

She also accuses the United States of operating “concentration camps” on the southern border with Mexico in which illegal immigrant children are separated from their parents and held in wire cages.

“Club for Growth analyzed how often the House Democrat Majority Makers voted with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, because we believe Ocasio-Cortez is, in many ways, the new leader of the political Left,” the CFG report stated.

“The Democrat Majority Makers have voted with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 91.72 percent of the time,” the report said.

Voting most frequently with Ocasio-Cortez among the 43 Democratic freshmen are Reps. Mike Levin (Calif.), Donna Shalala (Fla.), Mary Gay Scanlon (Pa.), Katie Hill (Calif.), Tom Malinowski (N.J.), Dean Phillips (Minn.), Lauren Underwood (Ill.), Sean Casten (Ill.), and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Fla.).

“Despite claiming moderation and independence on the campaign trail to get elected,” CFG President David McIntosh said in a statement accompanying release of the report, “it turns out that the House Democrats who beat Republicans in 2018 blindly and overwhelmingly support Speaker Pelosi and her progressive agenda and even the more radical agenda being pushed by her socialist colleagues like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
Contact Mark Tapscott at [email protected]
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the states represented by several members of Congress. Lauren Underwood represents Illinois, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell represents Florida, Tom Malinowski represents New Jersey, Dean Phillips represents Minnesota, and Mary Gay Scanlon represents Pennsylvania. The Epoch Times regrets the errors.
Mark Tapscott
Mark Tapscott
Senior Congressional Correspondent
Mark Tapscott is an award-winning senior Congressional correspondent for The Epoch Times. He covers Congress, national politics, and policy. Mr. Tapscott previously worked for Washington Times, Washington Examiner, Montgomery Journal, and Daily Caller News Foundation.
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