Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., will not be voting to reelect Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as House speaker, according to an interview with Politico released Friday.
"I will not be voting for Nancy Pelosi," Slotkin said. "I have no idea if people are gonna run against her, or who might run against her. And I will of course have this conversation directly with her. But I believe we need new leadership.
"I would love to see more Midwesterners, because if you look across the leadership … I respect these people, but it's New York and California."
The self-styled pragmatic "Midwestern Democrat" represents Michigan's 8th District, which voted for President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. This year, Slotkin won reelection to Congress by less than four percentage points, and Trump won by less than one point in the district, reports National Review.
The congresswoman also criticized Democrats for their lack of a coherent message, telling Politico, "The brand of the national Democratic Party is mushy. People don't know what we stand for, what we're about."
Since the Democrats lost seats in the House after the Nov. 3 elections, there has been infighting between moderate and progressive factions of the party. Moderates have claimed that slogans like "defund the police" and the embrace of democratic socialism have hurt the party, while progressives have said the centrists are out of touch with their own base.
Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, gained prominence in September 2019, when she was part of a group of Democrats who pushed to open an impeachment inquiry against Trump.
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