Anti-LGBT Rep. Marcia Fudge May Challenge Pelosi for Speakership

Fudge is seemingly part of  the "civil-rights-for-me-but-not-for-thee crowd"
and has voted against protecting LGBT Americans. 

Surveys have shown that 82% of LGBT voters supported Democrats at the polls in the 2018 midterm elections and many gave generously to Democrat candidate campaigns.  Indeed, in some very close Democrat victories, the LGBT vote may have won the day for Democrats (the LGBT community, including the husband and I, worked very hard for Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's winning campaign).  Enter Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge who has opposed the so-called Equality Act that would expand non-discrimination protections for LGBT individuals and women and by adding those categories to the Civil Rights Act.  Fudge now wants to challenge Nancy Pelosi - a long time LGBT ally - for Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Unlike Fudge, Nancy Pelosi wants to make passage of the Equality Act a Democrat Party priority.  I can think of few ways to more thoroughly insult and alienate the LGBT community than to put someone like Fudge in as Speaker of the House.  Some in the LGBT community have described Fudge as part of the "civil-rights-for-me-but-not-for-thee crowd."  Others have noted that the rest of the Congressional Black Caucus supported the Amendment to the Civil Rights Act, so Fudge is an out of the mainstream outlier.  A piece in Roll Call looks at a meeting meeting between Pelosi and Fudge.  Here are excerpts:

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi met with her potential competition for the speaker’s gavel on Friday, Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, who left the meeting still contemplating a bid.

“No,” Fudge told reporters when asked if Pelosi asked her not to run. “What she asked me was basically how we could get to a point where I could be supportive.”

Asked if such a point exists, even if she opts not to run against Pelosi, Fudge said, “There is a point, yes, but it’s going to take some.”

Fudge said she used the meeting to tell Pelosi about some of her concerns, adding that she needs more time to talk to people and think about whether she will run against her. The Ohio Democrat is headed home for Thanksgiving and plans to announce a decision shortly after the holiday.

She also told Pelosi she would speak with her again after Thanksgiving, presumably before any public announcement.

Asked if the meeting encouraged her toward running, Fudge said, “No, but it didn’t discourage me either.”

If she does run, Fudge said she hasn’t decided yet whether she’d seek the caucus nomination on Nov. 28, in which only a simple majority vote is needed to be selected the caucus’s choice for speaker, or challenge Pelosi during the floor vote Jan. 3. 

Pelosi clearly is trying to avoid a floor fight.

“I think her goal is to try to quickly as possible unify the caucus, and I understand that,” Fudge said. “And that is why I thought it was important that when she asked me to come and see her that I did so.”

The conversation with Fudge was “candid and respectful,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Among the issues discussed, according to Fudge, were succession planning and “the feeling in the caucus of people who are feeling out and left behind.”

Politico reports that the Pelosi-Fudge meeting was at the behest of incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).  Here are highlights:

Nancy Pelosi sat face to face with her potential challenger, Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, on Friday as the California Democrat continued her fight to reclaim the speaker’s gavel.

The two women huddled at the behest of incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), a key Pelosi ally and senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus who is also close with Fudge, the CBC’s former chairwoman.

Pelosi also spent Friday afternoon meeting with incoming Democratic lawmakers who during their campaigns vowed to oppose her as speaker, including Reps.-elect Max Rose (N.Y.), Jeff Van Drew (N.J.), Mikie Sherrill (N.J.) and Haley Stevens (Mich.).

After Pelosi met with the incoming freshmen who had called for new leadership during their campaigns, some skeptics left the room expressing an openness to supporting her.

With her opponents continuing to work against Pelosi, the California Democrat's allies are hitting back in her defense.

Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky blasted Pelosi’s critics for defying “the majority voice of the caucus.” She suggested they are worse than the House Freedom Caucus, the group of conservative rabble-rousers who banded together to defy GOP leadership for years.

“The majority rules!” Schakowsky said, aghast. “The very idea of organizing without even an opponent. … They do not have a candidate.”

I'm not necessarily a Pelosi fan, but I surely do not want an anti-LGBT individual like Fudge in the position of Speaker of the House.  Similarly, I do not want an inexperienced novice in the position given that the next 2 years will require a Speaker who can play hard ball and hold Trump and other GOP misogynists to account.