Former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi insisted on Wednesday that her party’s presidential nominating process after President Biden dropped out was “open,” and Vice President Kamala Harris “won it,” despite the absence of any such contest.
Prior to Biden stepping down as the Democratic Party’s nominee in mid-July, Pelosi reportedly said she favored a competitive open primary process to replace him if needed. On Wednesday, Semafor’s Kadia Goba asked Pelosi if she had changed her mind after seeing all the “excitement” Harris generated when she was tapped to replace Biden.
“No, I didn’t change my mind. We had an open primary and [Kamala Harris] won it. Nobody else got in the race,” Pelosi said. “Yes people could have jumped in – there were some people who were sort of preparing, but she just took off with it, and actually it was a blessing because there was not that much time between then and the election and it sort of saved time.”
“But it wasn’t that we didn’t have an open primary,” Pelosi added. “It’s just that nobody got in because she had a running start.”
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Amid intra-party pressure, Biden dropped out of the race for president on July 21 and endorsed Harris as his successor the same day. Harris was the informal nominee from that point forward until the Democratic National Committee decided to implement an unprecedented virtual roll call ahead of its national nominating convention in August. The first-of-its-kind roll call vote ended with Harris getting 99% support from the party’s participating delegates. Harris was the only candidate who qualified for the virtual roll call vote, despite three challengers who wanted to run against her. The failed challengers were reportedly unable to collect the 300 delegate signatures necessary to gain access to the virtual ballot, according to Politico.
Conservatives focusing on the election called Pelosi’s comments about Harris’ nominating process a “joke” and a “lie.”
“The votes of 14 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden were thrown away as Harris was installed as the Democrats’ nominee for president – a job for which she has never received a single vote,” said Ryan Walker, executive director at Heritage Action For America, a conservative political advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., affiliated with the Heritage Foundation. “Saying she won an open primary is a joke.”
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“Listening to Nancy Pelosi’s comments about Joe Biden, you could almost forget that she was one of many who lied to us about his condition, right up until the moment it was no longer to her political advantage to do so,” Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, added. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that she’d now to try to lie about what she calls the ‘open nomination’ process that led to Kamala’s ascension.”
Meanwhile, academic elections experts told Fox News Digital that nothing illegal or undemocratic took place because ultimately it is each party’s purview how they go about nominating their candidate.
“You could probably sue the party for a civil tort and say, you know, ‘They did something wrong to me here.’ But it wouldn’t be a violation of election law,” said Jeremy Mayer, a professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Public Policy and Government. “It’s not a coup, as some would say.”
American University professor Leonard Steinhorn, a political communications expert, questioned what other options the party had at that point with the election being less than four months away.
“One has to ask themselves: What else would a party do?” he asked.
Mayer and Steinhorn also argued that the Republican Party would likely have done something similar with Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, if the GOP nominee faced some sort of hurdle preventing him from running.
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“You can always talk in ideal circumstances about what’s best and what ought to be. But you know, as there’s that old 1980s expression, ‘Reality Bites,’ and you have to be able to adjust and adapt to the circumstances that you have,” Steinhorn said. “In an ideal world, you may want to have the candidates vetted by the public more, whether it’s an open primary – which might have been impossible to set up in any number of critical mass states – or forums that would allow people to sort of evaluate different candidates. But at that point, Vice President Harris moved quickly with Joe Biden’s support, to consolidate her support and get the majority of the delegates. In which case, why would anyone else run?”
Mayer and Steinhorn also pointed out that, while the process did go against contemporary norms, it is not entirely unprecedented.
“She was picked in the way that we picked our candidates from 1832 to 1968 – the convention – and that produced some pretty good presidents, but we expect today for a president to be picked by the people of the party in an open primary process. And that’s not what happened with Harris,” Mayer said. Meanwhile, Steinhorn pointed to former President Gerald Ford, who he said “did not once face any primaries or any national referendum at all.”
Last week, Pelosi also responded to questions on the fairness of the Democratic Party’s nomination process during an episode of ABC’s “The View.”
“It was an open [process],” Pelosi insisted. “Anybody could have gotten in. She got in, and she won, and a president of the United States had endorsed her who was very respected. So, that meant a lot, but people don’t understand, other people could have gotten in. She just locked it up. Politically astute, as I said to you before.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Pelosi’s office for comment but did not receive a response.
