WASHINGTON _ Rep. Jim Clyburn now has a clear path to becoming the House majority whip, the chamber's third-ranking leadership position.
Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., the South Carolina Democrat's opponent for the leadership position, withdrew her bid Monday.
In a statement, DeGette said her colleagues were feeling "pressure ... to return the three senior leaders to their posts without opposition. We have enough work to do without this internal pressure."
Clyburn, 78, wants to take back the job he held the last time the party was in the majority, from 2007 to 2011. Seventy-eight-year-old minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and 79-year-old minority whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., are running for speaker and majority leader, respectively.
DeGette is exiting the race three days after Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., Clyburn's de facto campaign manager, announced that Clyburn had secured the votes to be majority whip.
DeGette, 61, said she was never running against Clyburn, but rather was pursuing a position she has been eying for over a decade. If anything, the congresswoman argued, she was running to promote a "generational shift" and greater involvement of women.
She told members she decided to run for whip because she thought Clyburn would forgo campaigning for this position himself. Clyburn's supporters had been saying for months he might explore whether he had a path to becoming the first black speaker, or even majority leader, if Democrats took back control of the House.
Yet in the early morning hours of Nov. 7, shortly after Democrats officially secured the House majority, Clyburn confirmed he had always planned to run for whip unless Pelosi and Hoyer were not running for their old jobs.
From the very beginning, DeGette's challenge was a target of controversy.
As the highest-ranking black member of Congress and currently the sole African-American in leadership, Clyburn was the only member of the incumbent "top three" slate to face an opponent, a dynamic that raised alarms among Clyburn's allies.
"It's offensive, it's insulting, the things that are being said, that he was a 'figurehead' as whip and other people did the work," said Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., the outgoing chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, prior to DeGette's announcement that she would leave the race.
"(Clyburn) went to 100 districts this campaign cycle," Richmond added. "Nobody else did that who's running in this campaign. As chairman of the Black Caucus, I just find it interesting and insulting all at the same time that he's the one with opposition."
Black Democrats _ from Symone Sanders, press secretary for Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, to Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, who has been mulling a challenge to Pelosi for speaker _ openly questioned why Pelosi would not endorse Clyburn against DeGette, while Hoyer volunteered to make his support for Clyburn public.
Pelosi has still not publicly endorsed Clyburn.
Clyburn himself expressed concern about the rhetoric being used among some detractors, which he described as racially charged "dog whistles" designed to undermine his accomplishments.
"Little dog whistles (have) been floating around this side for a long time," Clyburn told McClatchy, referring to fellow Democrats.
If Pelosi's critics are successful in blocking her bid to be speaker, Clyburn could re-evaluate whether he wants to keep his "safe" seat or explore a promotion.
House Democrats will vote for party leaders Nov. 28. Pelosi's election would become official in a vote on the House floor Jan. 3.
