California Rep. Robert Garcia will be the next top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee after beating Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch in a 150-63 caucus vote Tuesday.
Garcia, 47, won a first-ballot majority after winning the backing of the caucus’ powerful Steering and Policy Committee on Monday evening.
Serving just his second term in Congress, Garcia has quickly risen through the ranks. He’s currently a member of Democratic Caucus leadership and served as a co-chair of Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign.
In a contest that had tested House Democrats’ desire to set aside its penchant to reward seniority in favor of promoting younger voices, Garcia had pitched himself to his colleagues as a consensus candidate with managerial experience as a former mayor of Long Beach.
In a previous interview with POLITICO, he called it “premature” to impeach President Donald Trump without buy-in from other Democrats — a contrast with other young progressives who have sought to kick-start the process. And he’s emphasized that the committee under his leadership would do more than probe the Trump administration.
Democrats have been maneuvering for the top Oversight job since April, when Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly announced he would step aside from the job amid a battle with cancer. He died in May at 75.
For weeks, the race pitted two senior Democrats — Lynch, 70, and Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, 76 — against two insurgent young progressives — Garcia and Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, 44. Crockett and Mfume dropped out of the race Tuesday after falling short in the Steering test vote.
“If you are going to be in leadership, you need to know that you have a team that is ready and willing to work with you,” Crockett told reporters Tuesday. “It was clear by the numbers that my style of leadership is not exactly what [Democrats] were looking for, and so I didn’t think that it was fair for me to push forward and try to rebuke that.”
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s decision not to run a second time for the Oversight post and to instead stay on the Energy and Commerce Committee helped open up the field.
Connolly’s race last year against the 35-year-old Ocasio-Cortez was similarly seen as a generational challenge within the caucus. But senior Democrats — including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi — lined up behind Connolly, quashing efforts for a changing of the party’s old guard.
This time, the party’s elders were split in the race. Pelosi never endorsed Garcia, but she had met with her fellow Californian as the contest ramped up and was widely seen in the caucus as a Garcia ally.
“I’m a Californian,” she said as the voting was underway Tuesday. “I’m partial to mayors.”
Some of the most powerful blocs in the party opted to remain on the sidelines. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus endorsed Garcia, who was the sole Latino candidate in the race and will be one of two Latino committee leaders along with Rep. Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.). But groups like the Congressional Black Caucus, New Democrat Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus did not make endorsements.
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