Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grabbed a marker and turned to a whiteboard in order to give her followers a brief lesson on the most important position in Washington: the Speaker of the House.
The New York Democrat drew the position with simple letters, using “S” for Speaker and “L” for leadership, and showed how the role connects to the whip and the majority. Throughout the video, the congresswoman stressed the practical skills the Speaker should have, from getting votes to building the coalition.
The lesson is relevant to what is happening in Washington right now. The Democrats won the majority in the House in the recent midterm elections, and Hakeem Jeffries of New York is the current favorite to be the Speaker of the House.
Ocasio-Cortez didn’t mention any candidates for the speaker in the video.
“The speaker’s job, it is … I’m trying to … I have to write this backwards for you all. The speaker’s job is legislative, and it is political,” she said.
She said that she had to write backward for viewers and thanked a commenter for the advice. “Someone told me to use letters, so I thank you for the tip, because I can write one letter individually,” she added.
“So the speaker’s job is both legislative and political. The legislative responsibilities of the speakership is to have a whip operation,” Ocasio-Cortez explained.
She elaborated on what it means in practice.
“A whip operation means both knowing how all of your members are going to vote on a given bill, and if you know how all of your members are going to vote, then you know what bills will have a majority of your caucus,” she added. “So you know which bills have the numbers to pass before you bring it to the floor, and you know which bills do not have the numbers to pass before you bring it to the floor.”
She noted that it becomes more difficult to count those votes in the diverse caucus.
“So the legislative responsibilities of the speaker involves a whip operation, and sometimes that also means wrangling all and convincing all of your members, which the Democratic caucus has a broad ideology. We know this,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “There are, there are left members of Congress, are progressive members of Congress. There are moderate members. There are conservative members of the Democratic caucus. So, so you, so you have to organize this whole legislative and whip operation.”
The other part of the job, she explained, is about keeping the power.
“And then your other job is political, and your political job is about keeping your majority,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And there are always tons of political debates about what positions will either help Democrats win a majority at or keep their majority, but as, as the speaker, your primary job is to do this.”
Then Ocasio-Cortez turned to how a speaker gets the job, the process that she said most voters don’t see.
“Although, and I said this during my stories, which is what prompted this live, that election, you may have seen a version of it happen on television on the House floor, but it actually, the real election happens before them, and it happens behind closed doors via a secret ballot,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And this is what I was communicating to some of you all on Instagram stories. It happens via a secret ballot and a caucus vote. And that ballot, some, like, you know, some people say, why is it a secret ballot, etc.”
The speaker isn’t the only position filled this way, she added.
“The speaker is also not the only person that is elected this way. Every committee chair, Democratic leadership is actually like a dozen people, depending on what you count as leadership, but there are things in all those formal leadership positions,” she said. “There’s a speaker, there’s the leader, there’s the whip, there’s the caucus chair, then there are committee chairs. All of these are elected, and contested elections are by secret ballot.”
To explain what a caucus ballot looks like, Ocasio-Cortez compared it to the ballot Texans saw on Nov. 3, in the race where Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican governor Greg Abbott.
“And that ballot, when you vote, is not this person’s name, yes or no. That’s not how this ballot looks. This ballot looks like this. Let me see. The ballot looks like this. This person’s name, you either vote for it, kind of like your ballot when you’re voting at the polls,” she said. “When you vote at the polls, the … your ballot doesn’t look like Greg Abbott, yes or no. Your ballot looks like Greg Abbott or Gina Hinojosa, and you have to select who you want your candidate to be. It’s the same thing with an internal caucus election.”
What are your thoughts on AOC’s whiteboard breakdown on how the House Speaker is selected? Leave a comment below!
