When the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, 79-year-old Rep. David Scott, didn’t immediately return to Congress after the November election because of back problems, many House Democrats turned to a colleague famous for complaining about the aging leaders of the party: Rep. Dean Phillips.
Phillips, who is leaving Congress this year after unsuccessfully challenging Joe Biden during the presidential primary, isn’t just fed up with the Democratic Party dismissing age concerns electorally; he’s also frustrated with the Democratic system in Congress that rewards years in office above anything else. And he’s not alone.
“Members of the committee have been sharing their concerns about the erosion of his health and ability to effectively lead the committee for over a year,” Phillips said of Scott in a text message to NOTUS, conveying that he’d spoken with four members of the Agriculture Committee.
Under normal circumstances, many House Democrats might find Scott’s absence reasonable. But some lawmakers have already expressed concerns about Scott’s stamina and his ability to carry out important committee tasks, like negotiating the farm bill.
The questions about Scott only intensified Wednesday after he missed a Congressional Black Caucus candidate forum, where the Democrats vying for top committee spots made their pitches to the CBC.
“I don’t know why he didn’t come,” CBC member Rep. Maxwell Frost said of Scott. Frost, who is the youngest current member of Congress, said he wasn’t even sure if Scott was in town. (NOTUS spotted Scott at House votes later that afternoon.)
“It would have been great to hear from him there, but I don’t know why he didn’t come,” Frost said.
As Democrats try to make sense of their election defeats, Scott and other senior Democratic leaders have come under increased scrutiny. The question is: Are the oldest members of the Democratic caucus really the best equipped to take on a Republican trifecta led by Donald Trump?
“There’s been a lot more conversation about changing those rules that dictate tenure versus talent,” Phillips told NOTUS. “Why shouldn’t committee members be voting on who leads their committees rather than an entire caucus that has no idea about the competencies of chairs of committees that they don’t serve on?”
Phillips added that there are a lot of Democratic members who have been “operating under the old rules for a long time,” and since they’ve been “biding their time,” they think the system should continue to primarily reward the members with the longest tenure. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Even the House Republican conference has been able to limit the longest-serving — read: the oldest — lawmakers from chairing committees; Republicans have a three-term max on leading a committee, though some chairs are able to get waivers.
In the Democratic Caucus, however, groups like the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have made opposition to the seniority system a trip wire for potential party leaders. Many seats represented by Black and Latino lawmakers have been packed with minority voters, giving these lawmakers safe districts where they can reliably win reelection and serve decades in Congress.
The CBC and CHC have, in turn, realized they can hold substantial power for their historically ailing communities through the seniority system.
It has led to a situation on the Democratic side of the aisle where, according to Roll Call, the average age of the current ranking members in the House is 70, with members spending, on average, 24 years in Congress.
But this year, the seniority system seems to be drawing some major scrutiny.
Scott faces a challenge for the top spot on the Agriculture Committee from Reps. Jim Costa and Angie Craig. Facing pressure from Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, Raúl Grijalva, already said he wouldn’t seek another term atop the panel after he missed most of the last year for cancer treatment. (In retaliation for Huffman not waiting his turn, however, Grijalva recruited an even more junior Rep. Melanie Stansbury to run against Huffman.)
On the Judiciary Committee, longtime New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler faced his own pressure to step aside for Rep. Jamie Raskin, leaving an open spot atop the Oversight Committee. Among the lawmakers trying to lead that committee is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, according to Politico, has secured majority support from the panel over Gerry Connolly.
The Steering Committee will meet Monday to make its final recommendations on ranking members, but it’s already clear that the concerns over age and health have affected who will lead committees next term for Democrats. And as the seniority system gets less sacred, there’s new momentum to do away with it entirely — even within the groups that have benefited the most from it.
Sources told NOTUS there’s a growing generational divide in the CBC about whether Democrats should continue treating tenure as the primary factor in who should lead committees.
A source familiar with CBC leadership confirmed to NOTUS that they weren’t “terribly surprised” that some of the CBC’s younger members oppose the seniority system, even if they won’t publicly say so.
One of those less senior CBC members told NOTUS that unprecedented times call for ditching the “old playbook.”
“We have to rise to the occasion,” this CBC member said. “The idea that having institutional knowledge — that most people rely upon when they are a longer serving member — I don’t think that really matters at this moment because, honestly, the institution is burning before our eyes.”
The lawmaker added that “the norms were thrown out of the window the moment the country decided to elect a 34-count convicted felon to become president.”
“Having some sort of familiarity with what it is to fight in a MAGA world is probably what we need best,” this CBC member said.
The divide seemed to manifest itself Wednesday outside the CBC candidate forum that Scott missed.
Forty-nine-year-old Rep. Shontel Brown told NOTUS she hadn’t made a decision about who she would vote for to lead the Agriculture Committee. Twenty-seven-year-old Frost, the only member of Generation Z in Congress, also told NOTUS he “publicly” hadn’t decided who he was supporting. And before NOTUS could even ask 43-year-old Jasmine Crockett a question, she said she was “not commenting about the ranking member on Agriculture.”
Other, older CBC members were, however, more supportive of Scott.
Seventy-seven-year-old Sanford Bishop told NOTUS he was supporting Scott. “He’s done a great job,” Bishop said.
Fellow 77-year-old Rep. Al Green also said would be backing Scott. “I support seniority,” he said.
And 80-year-old Emanuel Cleaver said Scott was “still in first place on the first ballot because I made that commitment to him.”
Rep. Terri Sewell, who has been in Congress since 2011, told NOTUS that this conversation happens every new Congress.
“There’s this debate about seniority and should we decide to have a limited number of terms like the Republicans,” she said.
When Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn stepped down from their House leadership roles in 2022, the theme of their departure was, as Pelosi claimed, to make way for a “new generation.”
But during their time atop the Democratic Caucus, all three lawmakers were staunch defenders of the seniority system. Pelosi even sank challengers by telling groups like the CBC that the Democrats looking to usurp her position weren’t believers in the seniority system.
One of those Democrats was Rep. Seth Moulton.
Days after the election, Moulton went on television and argued that Democrats needed a complete overhaul. He told NOTUS it’s “healthy for a party to show that in the wake of such a loss, it’s willing and ready to make some changes.”
“The impression I’ve been getting from the calls that I’ve had with some of the people running is that they’re getting a lot of enthusiastic support,” he said. “The enthusiasm is for kicking down the old and coming up with younger people to come into leadership. We want dynamic, engaged, energetic, ranking members of committees, because they are important leaders for our caucus and the Congress.”
Moulton added that he expressed his opinions about deprioritizing seniority to a ranking Democrat, but that person wasn’t receptive.
Still, there are open questions about where certain Democratic leaders stand on the seniority issue.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has conspicuously stayed out of the debate — something once unthinkable for a Black leader.
When NOTUS asked Cleaver last week what he made about the conversation over the seniority system, he asked NOTUS to excuse him because he starts “getting emotional when I talk about this.”
He then narrated a conversation he had with former Rep. Charles Rangel on his first day in Congress.
Rangel, Cleaver said, told him that if the seniority system ceased to exist, Black members wouldn’t rise in the Democratic ranks.
“I feel the same way I did on the first day when I sat next to Rep. Charlie Rangel — he was my mentor — and he said, ‘The one thing I want you to know and remember is that we, above all other members, must respect seniority and give preference to seniority, or we’re going to get left out,’” Cleaver said.
“I’m not interested in changing, nor am I interested in doing as the other party, which is limiting the time that a person can serve as chair,” Cleaver added. “It’s almost like we don’t care how much experience and knowledge you have. Somebody gets more votes, and you’re just out. I’ll never support that as long as I’m here.”
“Unless Moses comes down with it written on a tablet, I will support seniority as strongly and totally as I can,” he said.
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Tinashe Chingarande and Nuha Dolby are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.