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Faced with a shrunken majority, House leaders are discouraging fellow Democrats from taking jobs in the new Biden administration – out of fears Republicans could land vacant seats, sources told The Post on Sunday.
Insiders have variously accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) Of urging Democrats to stay put to preserve their fragile majority.
Nancy tells members of the House, ‘Now is not the time to go,’ said a Democratic Party official briefed by Democratic representatives in Congress.
But another House insider said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) Is urging Democratic representatives in Congress to stay put and told Biden’s transition team to not poach its members due to the party’s narrow majority after the November 3 elections.
The sensitive topics of the ship jump at work for Biden amid the loss of House seats were discussed at a House Democratic caucus meeting last week.
“There’s no need to talk about it,” a member of the Democratic leadership reportedly said during the appeal over the House Democrats’ decision to relinquish their seats and work for Biden.
“The sentiment is this: don’t make rash decisions about going to administration without first considering the implications for the caucus,” said a Democratic insider familiar with the call.
The leaders of the Democratic House are “zeitgeist” that their majority is “thin as a razor,” the source said.
Pelosi’s office has denied that the president is pressuring House Democrats to step down to work for Biden.
“This is completely wrong. The President wishes the full contribution of House Democrats to Biden-Harris’ tenure and to the future represented in the administration, ”Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said.
Last week, The Post revealed that Biden was eyeing a bipartisan roster of 30 members of Congress known to work across the aisle for key administrative positions.
Biden’s transition team is studying 20 lawmakers in the House of Representatives and 10 in the Senate who received the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 2020 Jefferson-Hamilton Award for bipartisanship.
An insider said Biden’s team is looking more closely at the House – where Democrats have a majority – rather than the Senate, whose fate is up for grabs based on two special elections in Georgia in January.
The ballots are still being counted, but it’s clear the House Democratic majority will fall from its current margin of 233 to 201 over Republicans. Democrats are expected to lose a dozen seats.
On Friday night, Democrats won 219 seats while Republicans are the expected winners with 203 seats. There are 13 races yet to be named.
The results – which came despite Biden beating President Trump at the top of the table by 5 million votes – led to an open war between the left wing and the moderate and institutional wings of the party.
The finger pointing was centered on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and left wingers promoting the cut of police funding and Pelosi posing with a fridge full of expensive ice cream.
If a House Member were to join the administration, then their seat would be filled in a special election open to Democrats and Republicans. The timing of these elections varies from state to state.
Historically, the ruling president’s party has also lost seats in Congress in midterm elections. The House fell under Presidents Obama and Trump.
House leaders are particularly concerned that moderate Democrats who win votes have a proven track record in dynamic districts that fly co-op – giving Republicans a chance to win those seats.
Lawmakers like Northern Democratic Representative Anthony Brindisi have already been on appeal with Biden’s transition team, a source close to the deliberations said.
Brindisi drags former GOP rep Claudia Tenney into the machine tally in their rematch election. But he had narrowed the gap considerably by winning 75% of the first batch of thousands of postal ballots counted last week. It still trails 16,720 votes with 29,000 mail-in ballots to count.
Other New York Democrats representing potential swing districts include Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in the Hudson Valley and Reps from Long Island, Kathleen Rice and Tom Suozzi.
Hoyer’s office and Biden’s transition team made no comment.
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