A single vote on a routine measure that will never become law has touched off a firestorm of recriminations among House Democrats on Capitol Hill, offering a glimpse of simmering tensions within the party weeks before midterm elections in which they are pressing to win control of Congress.
The drama began Tuesday afternoon, when two of the most conservative Democrats in the House broke with their party to pave the way for votes on a slate of Republican bills.
By Wednesday, it had mushroomed into a full-on furor featuring accusations of betrayal, demands for punishment for the defectors and a quiet but intense round of whispers about what the episode said about the leadership of Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, who is in line to be speaker should his party win the majority in November.
Mr. Jeffries said he had been blindsided by the decision by the two lawmakers, Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, to side with Republicans on a procedural measure, and suggested that it had been the job of the chief vote-counter and No. 2 Democrat to be aware of such things.
“You’ll have to talk to Katherine,” he told reporters after the vote on Tuesday, referring to Representative Katherine M. Clark of Massachusetts. (Ms. Clark later said that she had not been apprised.)
Top Democrats demanded that the renegades be disciplined for straying from the party line.
“I think there should be a punishment,” said Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. “I think there should be consequences.”
Facing an outcry from their members, House Democratic leaders said in a sharp statement on Tuesday night that Mr. Golden and Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez had committed a “significant breach of trust” that required “a serious response.”
Still, by Wednesday evening, no such action had come. Mr. Jeffries said that members were still debating whether and how to discipline Mr. Golden, who is leaving office at the end of the year, and Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, who is running for re-election in a competitive district.
“We haven’t ruled anything in, and we haven’t ruled anything out,” he told reporters.
But Democrats, including some of the most senior in the party, continued to seethe.
Among the legislation that advanced to the floor under the measure they supported was a bill condemning socialism and calling for an election security crackdown, part of an effort by Republicans to paint Democrats as radical, tie them to left-wing figures who are unpopular in swing districts and hurt them at the polls.
“In a week when we should be talking about affordability, because of their votes we have to talk about bullshit stuff like socialism and, you know, all these other nonbinding resolutions that mean nothing,” said Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee.
Nearly all Democrats voted on Tuesday against Republicans’ anti-socialism resolution, in part because of the election restriction provisions that many of them viewed as unacceptable moves to suppress voting.
In a blunt sign of his anger, Mr. McGovern turned his back on Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez as she spoke on Wednesday at a Rules Committee hearing.
The infighting suggested a split among Democratic leaders, raising eyebrows among lawmakers. It also suggested that Mr. Jeffries, should he win the gavel next year, might suffer the very same difficulties that have plagued Speaker Mike Johnson as he has struggled to corral his fractious and razor-thin Republican majority.
To bring most bills to the floor, House leaders must pass procedural measures known as “rules” that do not have the force of law but are necessary to move legislation to a final vote. They are typically approved on party-line votes in which all members of the majority are in favor, whether they back the legislation or not. Members in the minority, in turn, reflexively oppose rules, regardless of their position on the underlying bill.
But in recent years, a group of far-right Republicans, unhappy with their leaders, has repeatedly refused to back such measures. House Democrats, shut out of decision-making in a body where the majority rules, have generally declined to step in and ease their path by voting in favor of rules, consistently sticking together and forcing Republicans to resolve their internal disputes or abandon their agenda.
On Tuesday, however, as a handful of Republicans voted against a rule needed to bring up several bills, appearing to doom it to defeat, Mr. Golden and Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez violated the long-held precedent and stepped in to cast the deciding votes in favor, allowing the measure to pass and bucking the unity that had been a point of pride for Democrats.
Both of them said they were motivated to break from their party in order to ensure a vote on a bill co-sponsored by Mr. Golden that would help lobstermen in Maine by delaying the implementation of regulations meant to protect whales.
But some Democrats said they were concerned that the move might presage future breaks should the party win the majority.
Mr. McGovern said he wanted to ensure that Democrats would avoid the messy battles that had so threatened Republicans’ control of the chamber that they have been at times forced to cancel votes.
“What I want to make sure is that we don’t become them,” Mr. McGovern said of Republicans. “If we’re in charge, people expect us to do things, get things to the floor, move legislation. I mean, they can’t.”
Representative Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania said the defections were “a big wake-up call for people to understand that it’s likely that we’ll be in the majority, and that we need to be a lot more tightly under control.”
In their joint statement, Democratic leaders said they had referred the matter to a party committee that governs caucus rules. But that group is not responsible for disciplining members, and though the matter was discussed on Wednesday at a previously scheduled meeting it held, Ms. Clark said that leaders needed to have “a discussion with the broader caucus.”
Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California and the head of that panel, told reporters that members made “a variety of suggestions to change our rules” but that any such changes were not going to be immediate.
Any move to punish Mr. Golden or Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez would need to come from Democratic leaders. The most common disciplinary tools have been to strip members of their committee assignments or deny them coveted spots in the next Congress.
Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez’s lone committee seat is on the powerful Appropriations Committee, which controls spending. But she dismissed concerns about being taken off the panel, and in her rural, Republican-leaning district, a high-profile feud with party leaders could potentially strengthen her re-election bid.
“If that’s what they feel they need to do, it’s not going to change how I represent my district,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez said, adding that she “slept like a baby” on Tuesday night.
Still, her decision may have political consequences for others in her party who cast their votes against the measure condemning socialism.
Eight Democrats, including Mr. Golden and Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, most of them in battleground or right-leaning districts, crossed party lines to vote with Republicans on the bill, inflaming a fight that has consumed the party this year over insurgent, left-leaning candidates.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who defeated a five-term congressman and top Jeffries ally in a primary in New York, condemned the vote and attacked the defectors.
“Democrats love talking about a ‘big tent,’ but then they vote in line with Republicans hellbent on destroying our democracy and stripping Black and brown people of the right to vote,” Ms. Chevalier said in a statement.
Olivia Diaz contributed reporting.
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