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\n

A fierce internal battle is developing among House Democrats for a job that might not even be open next Congress.<\/p>\n

Reps. Sara Jacobs of California and Lauren Underwood of Illinois are expected to seek the caucus vice chair post. The job is currently held by Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who is expected to step aside only if Democrats prevail in the midterms \u2014 allowing Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to become speaker and other members of the party leadership to step one rung up the ladder.<\/p>\n

Lieu would be in line to become caucus chair in that scenario, and the vice chair would become the only obvious vacancy in the House Democratic hierarchy.<\/p>\n

Jacobs sent a Dear Colleague letter<\/u><\/a> Monday officially declaring her run, while a person familiar with Underwood’s thinking who was granted anonymity to discuss her plans said she is \u201cdefinitely running\u201d but is \u201cexclusively focused on winning back the House\u201d for the time being.<\/p>\n

The two candidates already hold lower several level leadership positions. Jacobs is the parliamentarian of House Democrats\u2019 Steering and Policy Committee and is a regional vice chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Underwood is a co-chair of House Democrats\u2019 messaging arm, the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. She is also a co-chair of the DCCC\u2019s Red to Blue program.<\/p>\n

Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts had also been floating a run to colleagues<\/u><\/a> but announced Wednesday she is no longer pursuing the role. Some House Democrats have bristled<\/u><\/a> at Trahan\u2019s attempt to broker a bipartisan deal to regulate artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cRep. Trahan is grateful to the many colleagues who\u2019ve encouraged her to run for Vice Chair,\u201d spokesperson Francis Grubar said in a statement. \u201cShe has decided not to seek the position, and will keep her focus on the issues she\u2019s been working diligently to address, including confronting the real risks of frontier AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019ll keep doing everything in her power to elect Democrats, retake the House, and make Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fierce internal battle is developing among House Democrats for a job that might not even be open next Congress. Reps. Sara Jacobs of California and Lauren Underwood of Illinois are expected to seek the caucus vice chair post. The job is currently held by Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who is expected to step […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}