Last week, I wrote about how some Democratic United States Congress candidates to whom special interests had paid relatively little attention were elected in the recent midterm election in the big wave of Democratic electoral success across the country. After the election, I indicated, the special interests would seek to “make up for lost time to ensure these relatively unknown new Congress members become allies.” To the extent such efforts fail, some truly independent Democrats may, I wrote, emerge in the Congress.
One way the effort to ensure conformity among newly elected individuals is undertaken is through the respective political parties. Democratic House of Representatives Member-elect Don Leonard from Ohio provided in an Instagram post this week a peek into how that pressure works.
Leonard related in his Instagram post that he had met with “senior members of the Democratic House” who told him “in no uncertain terms” that if he did not support current Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) becoming Speaker of the House under the upcoming Democratic House majority, over the next two years Leonard’s life would be made “a living hell” and Leonard would not be reelected.
Leonard related that he had told these senior Democrats that, before making a voting commitment, he wanted to have a satisfactory conversation with Jeffries about “a couple of key issues.” Those key issues are “a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United” and “US support for the war in Iran and the country Israel that led us into it.” Never mind that, just fall in line on the Speaker of the House vote, was the response.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a 2010 US Supreme Court decision finding certain legal restrictions on communication by corporations, labor unions, and other organizations before elections violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Ending the Iran War, stopping US support for Israel, and amending the Constitution to counter the Citizens United decision were all part of the agenda upon which Leonard ran for Congress. Yet, senior Democrats are now putting enormous pressure on the representative-elect, as he put it in his Instagram post, to “wear the team jersey and, you know, be a good team player” instead of vigorously pursue key issues upon which he had campaigned.
