Posted on 11/09/2010 5:53:49 AM PST by WOBBLY BOB
WASHINGTON — The battle over who will be the No. 2 leader of weakened House Democrats in the next Congress took on racial overtones Monday as Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who is white, and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, who is black, battled for supporters.
Rep. Barbara Lee of California, who chairs the 41-member Congressional Black Caucus, told colleagues in a letter that it's important to keep an African-American on the party's House leadership team. Rep. Bobby Rush, an Illinois African-American, sent a separate letter backing Clyburn for the post.
Thirty House Democrats — none of them black — sent colleagues their own letter soliciting support for Hoyer, who has served in Congress for three decades.
The internal leadership contest between Hoyer, a convivial lawmaker from Maryland, and Clyburn, a South Carolinian who is the highest-ranking black member of Congress, was sparked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to seek the House minority leader job in the new Congress. Because her party will no longer be in the majority in January, she'll lose her speaker's position.
"With our country and our party at a crossroads, it is important that we have a leadership team in place that recognizes the strength and diversity of the Democratic caucus," Lee wrote in her appeal for Clyburn.
The 30 Hoyer supporters include seven Hispanic members.
"You may find the politics of race dictates a lot of what happens," Michael Franc, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, said.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
Pass the popcorn please.
I didn't say that. :)
Democrat party unity,who said a few years ago he would be serving us coffee?.
Democrats and MSM are the first to call Republicans racist.
Hoyer's about as convivial as a rattlesnake.
During a recent debate, Hoyer punched his opponent Charles Lollar - not once, but twice !
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