House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., insisted Thursday that Conor Lamb’s likely victory in Pennsylvania was not an indictment on her standing atop the House Democratic caucus despite his opposition to her during his campaign.
Pelosi told reporters Thursday that while Lamb says he will not support her for House Democratic leader, she doesn’t believe he ran against her and urged against looking too much into candidates speaking out in opposition to her on the campaign trail.
“I don’t think that he ran against me the entire time. I think he ran on his positive agenda,” Pelosi said. “It was a very issues-oriented campaign.”
“I just wanted him to win,” Pelosi said. “I don’t think that that had that much impact on the race. He won. If we hadn’t won, he might have a question, but we won. We won the race. The ‘D’ next to his name was very significant in those blue parts.”
Later on, she pointed to a candidate in a House primary contest in Texas who finished fourth and ran against Pelosi’s leadership.
“Let’s not read too much into this,” she said before citing her ability as a “master legislator.” “I have a strong following in the country and I don’t think that the Koch brothers should decide who the leader of the Democratic Party is in the House.”
At times, Pelosi spiked the football over Lamb’s likely victory over Republican Rick Saccone in the state’s 18th Congressional District, which is likely to vanish at the end of the year due to redistricting. Specifically, she said the win is a sign the Republican tax law is not a positive thing electorally for the opposite party despite banking on that for success in the 2018 midterms.
“We’re very excited about welcoming a new member from Pennsylvania … to the caucus. Hopefully that will be very soon,” Pelosi said, hailing his “personal record” as a reason for his likely victory.
“Tens of millions of dark special interest ad money still couldn’t make up for the toxic reality of the GOP agenda in Washington,” Pelosi said. “The tax message simply failed.”
