House panel recommends Garcia to lead Dems on Oversight panel
A key Democratic committee voted Monday night to recommend Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) to lead the party on the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, lending a good deal of momentum to the second-term Californian heading into a vote of the full caucus on Tuesday.
Huddled in the basement of the Capitol, the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee sided with Garcia over three other Democrats on the panel: Reps. Stephen Lynch (Mass.), Kweisi Mume (Md.) and Jasmine Crockett (Texas). The seat had been held by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), 75, who died last month after a short battle with esophageal cancer.
Lynch was the runner-up, followed by Mfume and Crockett.
The vote is not binding. While the Steering and Policy Committee is an influential panel, its votes are merely recommendations to the broader caucus, which will meet to decide the ultimate winner. That vote, by secret ballot, is scheduled for Tuesday morning.
In one prominent race in 2014, former Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) won the Steering panel's nod to lead Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee, but it was Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) who won the contest when the full caucus weighed in. Pallone remains in that seat more than a decade later.
Still, the Steering Committee is led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), and it's stocked with leadership allies, lending the panel outsized sway in the process of choosing committee heads to work with party leaders.
In winning Monday's vote, Garcia bested two much more veteran members of the Oversight Committee — Lynch and Mfume — striking a blow to the seniority system that's long guided Democrats in picking committee heads.
Lynch, 70, has been the interim ranking member of the panel since Connolly stepped out of that role in April, and he's made the case that his long experience of investigative work on the panel makes him the best fit for the permanent position.
Garcia, 47, has been given a boost by an endorsement from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, of which he is a member. He also has the advantage of hailing from California, which boasts the largest Democratic delegation in the House.
From the minority, Democrats are powerless to steer the Oversight Committee, which has broad jurisdiction over the federal government and the subpoena power to advance investigations. But the winner of Tuesday's vote for the permanent ranking member spot would be in line to take the committee gavel in 2027 if Democrats can flip control of the House in next year's midterms — a scenario that would lend the new chairman enormous powers to investigate the many controversies of President Trump's second term.
Leaving Monday night's vote, Garcia thanked his supporters but acknowledged that there was still one more vote remaining to seal the position.
'There's still an election tomorrow, and there's still obviously an important case to be made in the morning. And that's the case I'm planning on making,' he told reporters. 'And so we're going to run through the tape.'
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