As the House Administration Committee decides if they are going to unseat a duly elected member and send het back home to Iowa, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is demanding credit for seating her in the first place. Iowa certified the results of the state's 2nd-district, which Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican, won by two seats. She was sworn on January 3. During her most recent Thursday weekly press conference, Speaker Pelosi told reporters that "I want credit for" seating Rep. Miller-Meeks, rather than refusing to do so while the race is being contested.
A reporter had pointed out that "the investigation into the IA-02 race is causing some, maybe like heartburn, for Democrats, because some of these moderates in your party have come out opposed to unseating Rep. Miller-Meeks and I wondered what your thoughts were on that, Madam Speaker."
Speaker's Pelosi included that "Well, I don't know that they’ve come out opposed to that.. Yesterday, the Chair of the House Administration Committee, Zoe Lofgren, issued a statement on the contested election, Iowa’s Second Congressional District. In it, she talks about the process that is involved there."
Chairwoman Lofgren, a Democrat from California, released a statement on Wednesday which emphasized they would "follow the process" of reviewing the results. A considerable portion of the statement, however, sharply rebuked Republican criticism of the efforts from Rita Hart, the Democratic challenger who claims 22 votes were improperly counted, which would have resulted in her winning by nine votes. The second half of the statement read:
“Republicans know how this process works – over the past 90 years the Congress has adjudicated, in a bipartisan manner, more than a hundred contested elections cases filed by Republicans and Democrats alike in races nowhere near as close as Iowa’s Second.? With that history in mind, it is profoundly disappointing some of my Republican colleagues are now painting this process as somehow nefarious. Under the law, state certification is a requisite for establishing a contested election case.?
“Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy served with me on a task force to investigate the last substantive contested election before the House and said at the outcome of that investigation that ‘the American public can be very proud […] to know every vote in [Florida’s] Thirteenth District was counted, the outcome was correct.’ Why would he not wish for that same standard in Iowa’s Second District???
“The Committee on House Administration has not made any decision about the outcome of the contest.? We will continue to follow the process outlined by law. Decisions will be made based only upon the law and the facts. ?I urge Republicans to end their coordinated public campaign – filled with the same dangerous rhetoric and baseless accusations of ‘stealing an election’ that contributed to a deadly riot in the Capitol? – and instead join us in a deliberate and dispassionate examination of the facts before the Committee.”?
Speaker Pelosi asked that the reporters look at it from Hart's perspective. "If you had lost a race by six votes, wouldn’t you like to say there must be some way that we can count this," she offered. As Rep. Miller-Meeks has pointed out in standing by her legitimately winning the race, Hart did not file a lawsuit with the Iowa courts. Her attorney, Marc Elias, whom Republicans raise conflict of interest concerns with, claimed there wouldn't be enough time to do a recount, as the Wall Street Journal reported.
Overall, Speaker Pelosi behaved as she was doing Republicans a favor. Her response closed with:
Now, if I want to be unfair, I wouldn't have seated the Republican from Iowa, because that was my right on the opening day. I would have just said, ‘They're not seated.’ And that would have been my right as Speaker to do. But we didn't want to do that. We just said, ‘Let's just go through this process.’ Many Members were saying, ‘Don't seat the person.’ You know, you're naming a few who are saying, ‘Let's move on.’ But I'm saying, then people said, ‘Why should we seat somebody to have votes for all this time when their election is being contested?’ And we aid, ‘No, we will seat the Member, and then we'll go through the normal process.’ But it would have been under the rules allowable for me to say, ‘We're not seating the Member from Iowa.’ We did not do that. So, I want credit for that. Okay.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is heavily involved in the Republican effort against the "power grab" move in warning that, "Speaker Pelosi is attempting to unseat her and steal the race for the Democrats," and spoke about the race at his own press conference earlier in the week.
.@RepMMM won the race in #IA02. Then she won the recount. Then the state certified her election. Then she was sworn into office.
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) March 23, 2021
But now, Speaker Pelosi is taking steps to unseat her and steal the race for the Democrats—139 days after the election was held. pic.twitter.com/SarmTMt1ya
Although Speaker Pelosi largely dismissed the reporter pointing out that some Democrats took issue with the possibility of unseating Rep. Miller-Meeks, there are at least some Democrats who have warned against it.
We've reported about concerns from Reps. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Dean Phillips from Minnesota. Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey told Politico that "I have deep reservations."