Democrat congressional staffers want Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi replaced regardless of the outcome of the 2022 midterms, a new survey from Punchbowl News indicates.
According to the survey of Capitol Hill staffers, 62 percent of Democrat aides claimed they wanted Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer replaced whether or not the party makes gains in the House or Senate or not. Seventeen percent of Democrat staffers said Pelosi and Schumer should only be replaced “if Democrats underperform” while 20 percent testified they were content with keeping leadership the same.
While the 81-year-old Pelosi has maintained a grip on the House for years, there is clear discontent in her party, especially among progressives. Combine that discontent with the Democrat-controlled Congress’s failure to pass bills key to a blue victory in 2022 and the frustration that came with a massive loss for Democrats in Virginia and you have a recipe for a possible leadership change, which has been discussed before.
The report follows apparent discontent in the White House as well, coming the same week that a key member of Vice President Kamala Harris’s staff, senior adviser and chief spokeswoman Symone Sanders, is set to depart the White House before the end of the year following the Democrat’s terrible poll numbers.
“I’m so grateful to the VP for her vote of confidence from the very beginning and the opportunity to see what can be unburdened by what has been. I’m grateful for [Harris chief of staff] Tina [Flournoy] and her leadership and her confidence as well. Every day, I arrived to the White House complex knowing our work made a tangible difference for Americans. I am immensely grateful and will miss working for her and with all of you,” Sanders wrote in a note to her colleagues.
The vice president’s communications director Ashley Etienne also resigned from her role a few weeks prior citing “other opportunities.” Her departure followed a series of reports from several corporate media outlets detailing internal conflict and friction between staffers and Harris in the vice president’s office.
Politico reported in June that Harris’s team often experienced a “tense and at times dour office atmosphere” as staffers were forced to deal with the fallout caused by the vice president’s refusal to visit the U.S. southern border and infamous laughing on camera when asked why.