After 30-year-old filmmaker and former Congressional aide Jon Ossoff lost his bid to succeed Tom Price, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, to former Fulton County Board of Commissioners member Karen Handel, 77-year-old House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi resigned, just as her successor as Speaker, John Boehner, did. Pelosi’s resignation announcement was witnessed by associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, who covers Congress for us.
Speaker Paul Ryan is happy that Handel has managed to keep Georgia’s 6th Congressional District (a suburb of Atlanta) in Republican hands. Ryan gets a great deal of credit for Handel’s victory since his Congressional PAC poured millions of dollars into the race after Ossoff nearly won the primary on April 18 with 48.1% of the vote, against eleven Republican candidates in the traditionally Republican district. Unlike Handel, Ossoff doesn’t live in the District. The GOP painted Ossoff as a disciple of Pelosi.
“San Francisco is a much nicer place to live,” Pelosi told ASR Smith. “The weather in Washington is horrible, just as it was in Baltimore where I grew up as Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro’s daughter.”
In Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, Democrat David Aarestad, who lives in that suburban Denver District, is sure to win his primary next year and will then go on to defeat Congressman Mike Coffman, an alumnus of Vaishnav College in Tamil Nadu, India. Coffman's Congressional career is best known for his declaration, during a campaign fundraiser in May, 2012, when, following Trump’s birther lead, he expressed doubt that President Obama was born in the United States. The Congressman said, “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he is not an American. He’s just not an American.” That year, Coffman defeated Democrat Joe Miklosi by only two points.
Aarestad has two opponents in the Democratic primary, only one of whom, a 25-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter, lives in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District. Aarestad’s other Democratic opponent, who lives in Denver, was recruited by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to run against Coffman.
Pelosi will be succeeded as House Minority Leader by 43-year old Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who ran against her bid to be re-elected as House Minority Leader in November, 2016, but lost in the Democratic Caucus, 63-134.