Swordsmyth
04-26-2018, 08:13 PM
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) defended her party’s electoral operation on Thursday, after a candidate in a contested Colorado primary released audio tape of Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) urging him to quit the race.
“I don’t know that a person can tape a person without the person’s consent and then release it to the press,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference. “In terms of candidates and campaigns I don’t see anything inappropriate in what Mr. Hoyer was engaged in — a conversation about the realities of life in the race as to who can make the general election.”
Thursday’s controversy began when the Intercept released (https://theintercept.com/2018/04/26/steny-hoyer-audio-levi-tillemann/) audio of a December 2017 meeting between Hoyer and Levi Tillemann, a green energy entrepreneur running for the Democratic nomination in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District. The Democratic-trending district, one of 23 that elected a Republican to the House while backing Hillary Clinton for president, is one of the party’s top targets in November’s midterm elections.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has thrown its weight in the race behind Jason Crow, an attorney and veteran running a more center-left campaign than Tillemann (https://coloradopolitics.com/democrat-levi-tillemann-taps-bernie-sanders-veteran-run-6th-congressional-district-campaign/), who supports universal Medicare and other planks of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) campaign platform. In the December conversation, Hoyer told Tillemann that “a decision was made early on by the Colorado delegation” to back Crow, and that it would continue to do so.
“Staying out of primaries sounds small-D democratic, very intellectual and very interesting,” said Hoyer, according to the tape. “But it was clear that it was our policy and our hope that, early on, try to come to an agreement on a candidate that we thought could win the general, and to give that candidate all the help we could give them.”
More at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/04/26/pelosi-defends-party-intervention-in-democratic-primaries/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.efe9296cdcb6
“I don’t know that a person can tape a person without the person’s consent and then release it to the press,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference. “In terms of candidates and campaigns I don’t see anything inappropriate in what Mr. Hoyer was engaged in — a conversation about the realities of life in the race as to who can make the general election.”
Thursday’s controversy began when the Intercept released (https://theintercept.com/2018/04/26/steny-hoyer-audio-levi-tillemann/) audio of a December 2017 meeting between Hoyer and Levi Tillemann, a green energy entrepreneur running for the Democratic nomination in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District. The Democratic-trending district, one of 23 that elected a Republican to the House while backing Hillary Clinton for president, is one of the party’s top targets in November’s midterm elections.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has thrown its weight in the race behind Jason Crow, an attorney and veteran running a more center-left campaign than Tillemann (https://coloradopolitics.com/democrat-levi-tillemann-taps-bernie-sanders-veteran-run-6th-congressional-district-campaign/), who supports universal Medicare and other planks of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) campaign platform. In the December conversation, Hoyer told Tillemann that “a decision was made early on by the Colorado delegation” to back Crow, and that it would continue to do so.
“Staying out of primaries sounds small-D democratic, very intellectual and very interesting,” said Hoyer, according to the tape. “But it was clear that it was our policy and our hope that, early on, try to come to an agreement on a candidate that we thought could win the general, and to give that candidate all the help we could give them.”
More at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/04/26/pelosi-defends-party-intervention-in-democratic-primaries/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.efe9296cdcb6