WASHINGTON — With Donald Trump heading back to the White House, a growing band of younger, more energetic House Democrats is challenging seasoned veterans for powerful congressional posts, upending the party’s long-standing practice of deference to seniority.
Democrats, who will elect their committee leaders next week behind closed doors, are closely watching the high-profile race to be the Oversight Committee’s top Democrat as a litmus test about the future of seniority in the party.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a 35-year-old member of the progressive “squad” who is often mentioned as a future presidential hopeful, is taking on a more senior colleague, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., 74, who is battling esophageal cancer and was just elected to his ninth term.
“If she wins, it’s the end of seniority,” said a House Democrat who has served decades in Congress.
Some powerful committee leaders have already stepped aside amid challenges from relatively younger upstarts. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., 61, the Oversight Committee’s top Democrat this Congress, announced he would challenge Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., 77, the former chairman and incumbent ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, forcing Nadler out of the race. (Raskin has served in the House since 2017, while Nadler entered Congress in 1992.) That cleared the way for Raskin to become the Democratic leader on Judiciary and created the opening on Oversight.
On the Natural Resources Committee, six-term Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., 60, launched a surprise bid against 11-term Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., 76, the ranking member, who took a long leave of absence this year after he announced a cancer diagnosis. Rather than fight for his job, Grijalva dropped out and threw his support behind a fellow Southwesterner, Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., 45, who was elected in 2020 and officially launched her bid Monday.
Huffman is the fourth most senior Democrat on the panel this Congress but would be No. 2 in seniority next year given two retirements; Stansbury would most likely be fifth next year.
Fueled by ‘the Biden debacle’ in 2024 election
A Democrat working in the Biden administration said the phenomenon is fueled by “the Biden debacle” in the election, which taught younger Democrats that their elders won’t willingly step aside and sometimes need to be elbowed out.
A secondary cause is long-simmering tension that built up while Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., held the top job in the conference for nearly two decades.
“Going into Trump 2.0, there’s not going to be tolerance for having members not up to the job doing these jobs,” the Democratic official said. “After [Pelosi and her team] left, it made sense it would take a cycle, but there was always going to be a revolt downstream also.”
The official, who isn’t authorized to speak publicly about politics, said it follows other examples of prominent liberals’ refusing to give up power, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who died in office last year, as well as regret over Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision not to retire before she died in 2020, which enabled Trump to create a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
For Democrats, seniority has long played an outsized role in determining whom rank-and-file members selected as their committee leaders. And once committee members won the job of chairman (or ranking Democrat in a GOP majority), they were pretty much guaranteed to hold on to the job until they faced retirement, scandal or death.
In the race for ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., 79, who has had health issues for years, is fending off challenges from Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., 72, a third-generation farmer who is next in line in seniority, and Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., 52, a Democratic “Frontliner” who is one of the panel’s least senior members.
Rep. Greg Casar, the 35-year-old Texas Democrat who was elected Progressive Caucus chair last week, said there’s an infusion of new blood in the upper echelons of the party.
“That’s already happening,” he said, citing Raskin’s ascent on the Oversight Committee last session even though he wasn’t a senior member. “I think that what the Democratic caucus is starting to recognize is that we need to change. We can and that can sometimes mean changing the person in the role, or it could also just mean changing the way that we do things. And I think we need to change and show people, show voters that we are willing to fight tooth and nail for them.”
‘There’s a generational shift’
It’s not just younger members of Congress clamoring for generational change. Some veteran lawmakers who’ve been waiting in the wings for years for their chances to lead also want to see new blood.
“It’s healthy. Frankly, in some cases, it’s overdue. And I’ve, for a while, been an admirer of the Republican system of having term limits,” said Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., a member of the influential Financial Services Committee who has previously proposed six-year term limits for committee leaders unless they get waivers — the same term limits House Republicans use.
“It’s a much healthier way for people who end up spending a long time in Congress to have productive careers and, at the same time, allowing people like me who came into Congress in my 50s after two productive other careers to still have a path forward,” Foster, 69, continued.
“It’s a sort of interesting situation where you have baby boomers leading the charge for generational change,” said Foster, who was one of the ringleaders of an effort to force Pelosi, then the House speaker, to step down as Democratic leader after the 2022 midterm elections, paving the way for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who at 54 is three decades her junior.
One of the pro-seniority power centers in the caucus has been the Congressional Black Caucus, or CBC.
Decades ago, Black lawmakers often struggled to secure coveted committee leadership posts. So the once-small CBC prioritized seniority to help some of its members secure committee gavels and ranking member slots. As time went on, it pushed back against proposals for term limits for committee leadership posts and offered its strong support for Pelosi and her team, which protected her — and it.
That strategy paid off. This Congress, five CBC members led House committees: David Scott on Agriculture; Bobby Scott, D-Va., on Education and Workforce; Maxine Waters, D-Calif., on Financial Services; Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., on Foreign Affairs; and Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., on Homeland Security.
The CBC has grown in size and political clout in recent years. In the next Congress, there will be a record 62 CBC members, more than a quarter of the 215-member Democratic caucus. While CBC leaders insist that seniority isn’t dead and that it is still a factor in choosing leaders, they acknowledge that change is afoot in the party as leaders are “aging.”
“It’s very clear that we have so much talent and … there’s a generational shift within the body. But I think that there are enough folks within the body who recognize the value of seniority but don’t necessarily see it as the only criteria,” said incoming CBC Chair Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who is 60.
Clarke and current CBC Chair Steven Horsford, D-Nev., said the group will host candidates who want to lead committees at a private forum Wednesday as they seek support from colleagues.
‘It takes experience to do things well’
Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., 68, another CBC member, said she takes no issue with younger members’ challenging senior colleagues. Kelly will have an important role in the committee selection process. Jeffries just named her and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, and Nanette Barragán, of California, as the three co-chairs of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which makes recommendations to the full caucus about how to fill committee leader slots.
The Steering panel, closely aligned with Jeffries, will meet Tuesday and most likely again next week to debate and issue its recommendations. Then the full caucus will vote by secret ballot.
“Forever, everyone’s had the right to run. Everyone hasn’t done it, you know. And now I feel like people having the right to run doesn’t mean they’re going to win. And those who feel like there should just be seniority-based will vote one way, and those who feel like it should be different will vote another,” Kelly said. “So I believe in seniority, but I’m not 100% wedded to it.”
A Democratic committee staffer made the case for seniority, arguing that the House GOP system — in which committee chiefs get three-term limits, requiring waivers for fourth terms — is a “hot mess” as new leaders tend to clean house and rid the staff of institutional knowledge. The GOP rules have also prompted numerous institutionalist leaders to retire from Congress entirely rather than accept demotions after their tenures are up.
“I know Congress looks like a bunch of clowns, but actually it takes experience to do things well,” the staffer said.
