Hurt feelings prevailed in the House of Representatives on Wednesday as Republican leaders, furious over the ouster of ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, sought to punish their Democratic counterparts with petty office politics.
Two top Democrats in the lower chamber confirmed that the office of the speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry, had ordered them to pack up and move their staffed offices from the Capitol building to smaller offices around the greater Capitol complex, with just hours warning. It was an unabashed act of revenge-seeking that signaled one thing: House Republican leaders are very upset.
Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House who remains a key adviser to Democratic leaders after she stepped down voluntarily in January, was the first to confirm that she had been kicked out of her office by Republicans. Steny Hoyer, formerly majority leader until he too stepped back from leadership, told Axios on Wednesday that he had been ousted from his Capitol hideaway too.
The former speaker said that her office received the notice after business hours had ended on Tuesday — with a Wednesday deadline.
"The Speaker pro tempore is going to re-assign H-132 for speaker office use. Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed.”
Ms Pelosi mocked her Republican colleagues for focusing on unimportant and petty personal grudges as their party continues to face a looming government funding deadline while facing unrest within their own caucus.
"With all of the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting, one of the first actions taken by the new Speaker Pro Tempore was to order me to immediately vacate my office in the Capitol," she said in a statement to news outlets.
"This eviction is a sharp departure from tradition. As Speaker, I gave former Speaker Hastert a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished.”
The Independent has reached out to House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who took over the top spot in the caucus in January, for further comment.
Despite their complaints and wounded feelings, Republicans largely set themselves up for the embarrassing end to Mr McCarthy’s reign as Speaker of the House.
Their party took control of the House in January with a single-digit minority in January, following a disappointing midterm election performance. Mr McCarthy only became speaker then after multiple rounds of voting and agreeing to let his colleagues bring a motion to vacate with the support of just one member — a drastic change from tradition that spelled his doom from the beginning.
With the support of just a few Republicans on Tuesday, Mr McCarthy was kicked out of the speaker’s chair — thanks to unified Democratic support for his removal. He had declined to lobby Democrats to support him, preferring instead to dishonestly blame them on national television for trying to shut down the government in a CBS interview on Sunday.
Many Democrats who spoke with reporters on Monday and Tuesday said that the ex-Speaker’s comments to CBS’s Margaret Brennan blaming Democrats for the shutdown risk after he had failed to get a majority of his own caucus to support his legislation to avert one had sealed his fate.
