Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) dropped her bid to become the Democrats’ next ranking member of the House Oversight Committee after finishing dead last in a Monday night steering vote, ceding the role to winner Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA).
The Texas congresswoman, who vowed to open an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump if she were to become chair of the powerful committee earlier this month, told the Dallas Morning News that she withdrew her name from consideration on Tuesday after receiving just six votes in the steering meeting.
Garcia received the most steering committee votes with 33, with Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) coming in second with 15 Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) coming in third with 8.
Mfume also dropped out before the official vote to elect the Democrats’ top representative on the committee, leaving Garcia to easily sweep 150 votes over Lynch’s 63, sources told NBC News of the closed-door election.
“It was clear by the numbers that my style of leadership is not exactly what they were looking for and so I didn’t think that it was fair for me to then push forward,” Crockett told the Dallas newspaper. “What I care about is winning. Now, whether or not we’re going to win and how big we’re going to win, that’s a whole other issue.”
Complaining about how her public willingness to pursue a Trump impeachment was misconstrued to portray her as “going off the rails,” she argued that she was not pushing for a full impeachment mission.
Instead, the far-left lawmaker said she was simply discussing the value of an inquiry to highlight Trump’s conduct, which she disagrees with.
“The American people see a leader, if you want to call him that, who has decided that he is going to consistently violate the Constitution, consistently violate all existing laws and there so far has not been a check on him as it relates to the legislative branch,” she stated.
In her June 3 press release announcing her candidacy to become the Oversight Committee’s ranking member, Crockett wrote, “We must pull back the curtain on the unmitigated chaos under Trump 2.0 and translate our findings to the American people in a way they can digest.”
The ranking member position was left open following the recent death of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who resigned from the role shortly before he succumbed to esophageal cancer.
Crockett congratulated Garcia in a social media post, adding that the work of the committee “has never been more critical.”
“Let’s get the American people the accountability they deserve,” she wrote.
As he accepted the win, Garcia said Democrats “will hold Donald Trump and his Administration accountable for their corruption – and work to make our government more effective for the American people.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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