The Democrats' House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is rejecting growing calls from within her party to abandon her leadership position.
The winner of the special election in Pennsylvania's 18th district, Conor Lamb, is only the latest Democrat to call for Pelosi to step down. During the campaign, Lamb ran an ad in which he singled out Pelosi and said he does not support her.
Last year, more than a dozen Democrats began meeting to plot ways to bring in new leadership.
Today Pelosi firmly rejected her fellow Democrats, insisting this was all a Koch Brothers-led plot and it's proving Republicans are "devoid of ideas."
"Let’s not read too much into this," Pelosi told reporters. "This is part of a bankruptcy of the Republican Party. They are devoid of ideas about how they would meet the needs of the American people. So it’s an ad hominem. They can’t win on an issue, so they go after a person."
Pelosi said she should remain in her leadership position owing to being a "master legislator."
"I feel pretty confident about my ability to, first and foremost, be a master legislator for the good of the American people," she said. "I have proven that. But what you’ve done is not why you should go forward. Why you should go forward is what are you going to do next. And we have a very positive agenda about how to take back the Congress for the Democrats. I have a strong following in the country and I don’t think that the Koch brothers should decide who the leader of the Democratic Party is.”
Despite Lamb calling for Pelosi to step aside during the campaign and immediately after prevailing, Pelosi insisted he did not run against her.
“I don’t think he ran against me in charge," she told reporters. "I think he ran on his positive agenda, protecting Medicare — preeminently that — being there for working families, got strong support from labor. On the one hand Republicans are saying, ‘See? He ran like a conservative.’ And on the other hand I guess that identifies that they want to support Medicare, which they don’t, and the rest. So it was, I would think, a very issues-oriented campaign."
Pelosi says Republicans are orchestrating her removal from a senior leadership role because they dislike "poor children" and the LGBT community.
"I don’t think your opponent should choose your party’s leaders," she said. "I think that we have an importance case to make. They’re coming after me because of my city and they’re against LGBT and they’re against poor children. That’s been my mantra, the poor children in America that I’m here to support. Yes, I am a liberal, but I don’t think it’s — the misrepresentation is the demonization that they put out against any leader in the Democratic side. ... But no, I feel pretty confident that we’re going to win, we’re going to win big, we’re going to win a lot of seats and that’s going to be good for the American people.”