Ocasio-Cortez seeks to lead Democrats on Oversight panel

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Friday formally launched a bid to lead Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in the next Congress — a powerful seat that will play a prominent role in the party's effort to push back against President-elect Trump in his second term.

The move sets up a contest between Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) to replace the panel's current ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is stepping down to assume the top spot on the Judiciary Committee next year.

"This is not a position I seek lightly," she wrote in a letter to colleagues. "The responsibility of leading Democrats on the House Oversight Committee during Donald Trump’s second term in the White House is a profound and consequential one. Now, more than ever, we must focus on the Committee’s strong history of both holding administrations accountable and taking on the economic precarity and inequality that is challenging the American way of life."

Connolly, 74, is the more seasoned lawmaker, having served on Oversight for all of his 16 years in the House. And he's pointing to that experience to make the case that he's the better fit to confront Trump, particularly when it comes to the GOP's stated plans to shrink the federal workforce in the name of government efficiency and deficit reduction. Connolly, who hails from a northern Virginia district just across the Potomac River from Washington, represents a significant number of federal employees, and has a long record of fighting to protect them from blunt cost-cutting efforts.

Ocasio-Cortez, 35, was the youngest lawmaker in congressional history when she arrived in the House in 2019. Since then, she's built a national brand as a fierce voice for progressivism. And she's arguing it's time for the older generation of Democrats to pass the torch to a younger group of lawmakers — an idea that's gained some steam in the party in a year when the aging President Biden was nudged out of a reelection bid over concerns about his stamina and mental acuity.

With subpoena power and jurisdiction over a broad array of topics, the Oversight Committee is among the more powerful panels in the Capitol. From the minority, Democrats will not control those subpoenas nor have the power to dictate what issues get hearings, but the ranking member will have a high-profile platform to push back against the Republicans' legislative agenda and any GOP plans to continue investigations into the Biden administration or the Biden family.

Ocasio-Cortez has said she characterized her relationship with Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) as "not bad," pointing to their shared belief in reforming pharmacy benefit managers. But she's also vowing to give Republicans "hell" on those issues where they disagree.

Ocasio-Cortez is not alone is seeking to jump over more senior lawmakers to take top seats on committees. Already, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) has pushed Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) out of the ranking member spot on the Natural Resources Committee. Raskin's bid to lead the Judiciary panel forced Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) to abandon that seat. And several Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee are challenging Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) for the top spot on the panel.