Connolly defeats Ocasio-Cortez to lead Democrats on Oversight panel

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) on Tuesday defeated Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to lead Democrats on the Oversight and Accountability Committee in the next Congress, putting the feisty liberal veteran in one of the most powerful spots to confront President-elect Trump in his second term.

The win was forecast a day earlier, when the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee voted to recommend the seat to Connolly, who has a decade more experience than Ocasio-Cortez on the powerful committee.

The nonbinding Steering vote lent a symbolic boost to Connolly, 74, but his victory was ultimately decided by the full Caucus, which huddled behind closed doors Tuesday morning in the Capitol basement and voted by secret ballot to give him the coveted seat. The tally was 131-84.

Connolly also got some help from former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who endorsed his bid and lobbied actively on his behalf in the lead up to this week’s votes.

Connolly’s victory puts a halt, at least temporarily, to the meteoric rise of Ocasio-Cortez, a former bartender who stunned Washington in 2018 by defeating Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), then the chair of the Democratic Caucus, in a primary upset. In the process she made history as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. And she’s since built a national brand as an unapologetic defender of progressive ideals that’s made her a superstar of the left.

Ocasio-Cortez, 35, had made the case that the time is ripe for Democrats to embrace a new generation of party leaders — a concept that gained steam when President Biden was nudged off the ballot over the summer over concerns that he lacked the stamina and mental acuity for a second term. Yet Democrats have put the senior member in charge of almost every House committee in the next Congress, and Connolly’s victory on Tuesday continues that trend.

The outcome will put Connolly on the front lines of the coming partisan battle over Trump's second term agenda.

The Oversight Committee has a broad mandate to scrutinize the workings of the federal government, and while the panel is likely to avoid any tough examinations of the Trump administration while Republicans control the gavel, Connolly is vowing to use his perch as ranking member to highlight the policy areas where Democrats think the incoming president poses the gravest threat to working-class Americans — and the tradition of democracy itself.

Connolly had also made the case that he is the better fit to confront Trump over the GOP’s promised plans to shrink the federal workforce in the name of government efficiency and deficit reduction. Connolly, who hails from a northern Virginia district just across the Potomac River from Washington, represents a significant number of federal employees, and has a long record of fighting to protect them from blunt cost-cutting efforts.

Democrats are also in a good position to take control of the House in 2026, a midterm year that's historically tough on the party of the incumbent president. That scenario would put Connolly in place to take the Oversight gavel, granting him the subpoena powers afforded to the committee and opening up countless avenues for Democrats to examine the actions and policies of their adversaries in the White House for the final two years of Trump’s term.

The top Oversight seat was vacated when Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the current ranking member, stepped out of that position to challenge Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee — another powerful panel that will play an outsized role in the Democratic effort to push back against the second Trump administration and its conservative wish-list of policy priorities, which include an overhaul of a Justice Department that Trump maintains has been "weaponized" against him and other conservatives.

Raskin won that challenge last week when Nadler stepped out of the race.

Despite losing the Steering Committee’s recommendation on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez had hoped that the full caucus — which features a broader and younger array of lawmakers less receptive to the seniority system that's guided the Democrats' committee postings for decades — would be a more friendly audience on Tuesday.

Bucking the recommendation of the Steering panel is rare, but not unprecedented.

In 2014, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) won the Steering Committee's endorsement in her bid to unseat Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) as the senior Democrat on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. But the full caucus brushed aside that recommendation — and the wishes of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Democratic leader who had broken with tradition to endorse Eshoo — to put the more senior Pallone in the seat.

For Connolly, Tuesday’s victory is some vindication after he launched an unsuccessful bid for the top Oversight seat in 2022, when then-Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) was defeated by Nadler in a primary. In the shakeup that followed, Raskin jumped over two more senior members of the panel — Connolly and Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) — to take her seat.

Connolly’s victory also required him to overcome health problems that have led to the downfall of other ranking members this cycle. The Virginia Democrat announced last month that he’s suffering from esophagus cancer. But Connolly sought treatment immediately, and he’s been an active presence around the Capitol throughout Congress’s lame-duck session.

Other ranking members haven’t fared as well.

On the Natural Resources panel, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) was nudged out of his ranking member position amid treatment for lung cancer. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) will replace Grijalva after fending off a challenge this week from the more junior Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.).

Health issues have also plagued Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), the current ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, which contributed to the challenge he faced this month from two junior members on the panel, Reps. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) and Angie Craig (D-Minn.). Craig prevailed in that contest to replace Scott in that seat next year.

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