Which House Democrats changed their votes on impeachment from 2018 to 2019?
58… 66… 95… Each time the House of Representatives votes on impeachment of President Trump, the number of representatives in favor of beginning impeachment proceedings goes up.
The House voted overwhelmingly not to move forward with an impeachment vote of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, by a vote of 95 to 332. While still fairly lopsided, the motion came a bit closer to passing than January 2018’s impeachment vote of 66 to 355, or December 2017’s impeachment vote of 58 to 364.
This week’s impeachment resolution was a bit different than the previous ones. The 2019 resolution focused on Trump’s recent tweet telling four congresswomen to “go back” to where they came from, which Trump subsequently claimed referred to their districts but many interpreted as meaning their countries of origin. (Erroneously presumed not to be the United States, when in fact three of the four were born here.) Last year’s resolution focused on Trump’s equivocating comments after the racist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia and his calls as a presidential candidate to ban all Muslim immigration.
How many House Democrats changed their votes? Which ones did? How did freshman Democrats vote? And did any Republicans change their vote?
Of the 171 House Democrats who voted on both the 2018 and 2019 impeachment votes…
- 132 (or 77%) did not change their vote.
- 39 (or 23%) did change their vote.
Despite new developments between the two impeachment votes, such as the Mueller report laying out in detail the evidence that many believe amounts to obstruction of justice, more than three-quarters of House Democrats remained unmoved.
One major person who remained unchanged was Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA12).
“I’m not for impeachment,” Rep. Pelosi told Washington Post Magazine, referring in March to general impeachment efforts rather than this week’s specific measure. “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”
Pelosi has also argued — and it’s true, given Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s statements on the matter — that it’s a dead-end effort because even if the Democratic controlled House voted to impeach, the Republican controlled Senate wouldn’t vote to convict — to actually remove Trump. Similarly, in the late 1990s, the Republican controlled House voted to impeach President Bill Clinton, but the Senate acquitted the president.
Of those 39 House Democrats who changed their vote…
- 28 (or 72%) moved towards impeaching Trump.
- 9 (or 23%) moved away from impeaching Trump.
- 2 (or 5%) were unique cases: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI2) moved from no-impeachment to not voting, presumably due to her presidential campaign, while Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR4) moved from no-impeachment to voting “present.”
Those who moved away from impeaching were primarily members of leadership, or in good standing with leadership, who fell in line with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. House leadership in both parties did not want impeachment, but Rep. Al Green (D-TX9) in both 2018 and 2019 utilized a little-used House rule allowing any member to bypass leadership and force a vote.
Those who moved away from impeachment included House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD7), House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY8), and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA5).
One notable exception was House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY10), who changed his vote towards impeachment.
“I opposed this procedural motion because this article of impeachment should have been referred to the House Judiciary Committee,” Rep. Nadler said in a press release. “One resolution related to impeachment has already been referred to the Committee. The subject matter of Congressman Green’s resolution was separate and distinct and did not go directly to the issues of obstruction, corruption, and abuse of power at the core of our investigation — but it, too, should have been referred to us.”
Of the 63 freshman House Democrats…
- 14 (or 22.2%) voted to impeach Trump.
- 49 (or 77.8%) voted not to impeach Trump.
More than three-quarters of newly elected House Democrats voted for the status quo. Many flipped districts from Republican to Democrat last November in swing states or even red states, which feature plenty of Trump voters that members may be wary of alienating.
One such new member was Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA17). “We shouldn’t be doing this for any political purpose, so I’m not sure why the timeline is so important if we’re not taking into account the 2020 elections,” Lamb told local Pittsburgh radio station WESA. “I think some people are trying to rush this through before then. But my point is, let’s get to the right answer no matter how long it takes, and that involves following the system that our founders laid out for us.”
Despite media prominence of several freshman House Democrats on the left wing of the party, who voted to impeach — including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY14), Ilhan Omar (D-MN5), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA7), and Rashia Tlaib (D-MI13) — most freshman House Democrats did not follow their lead.
“Opening an impeachment inquiry is exactly what we must do when the President obstructs justice, advises witnesses to ignore legal subpoenas, & more,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. She has cited likely violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits the president from personally profiting from his office, as the top reason for impeachment:
Of the House Republicans…
No House Republican voted to allow the impeachment vote to move forward, for any of the three votes in 2017, 2018, or 2019.
Republican Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA1), the second-ranking House Republican, offered his rationale:
“The power of impeachment is one of our gravest responsibilities and should not be invoked lightly or without reason,” Rep. Scalise said in a press release. “We could have used this floor time to address the humanitarian crisis on the southern border or lower prescription drug prices for American families. Instead, we had to deal with an irresponsible and hostile vote against the President.”
House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA23), the top-ranking House Republican, says Democrats are bent on impeachment no matter if the facts contradict it:
“I think [House Democrats] decided to impeach the president the day the president won the election,” McCarthy said on This Week with George Stephanopolous. “There’s nothing that the president did wrong. In this process to be impeached, show me where the president did anything to be impeached.”
One House Republican-turned-independent voted for impeachment
Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI3) previously voted not to impeach while a registered Republican but left the party to become an independent earlier this month and changed his vote towards impeaching.
“Contrary to [Attorney General William] Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” Rep. Amash tweeted. “In fact, Mueller’s report identifies multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.”
Amash is also a first-generation citizen in his family, born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother. Amash has previously tweeted about being told to go back to his country by racists, similar to Trump’s comments towards the four Congresswomen earlier this month.
28 House Democrats moved towards impeachment:
- Earl Blumenauer (D-OR3)
- Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR1)
- Brendan Boyle (D-PA2)
- Anthony Brown (D-MD4)
- Tony Cárdenas (D-CA29)
- Joaquin Castro (D-TX20)
- David Cicilline (D-RI1)
- Danny Davis (D-IL7)
- Diana DeGette (D-CO1)
- Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI12)
- Mike Doyle (D-PA18)
- Marcia Fudge (D-OH11)
- Joseph Kennedy (D-MA4)
- Daniel Kildee (D-MI5)
- Rick Larsen (D-WA2)
- Zoe Lofgren (D-CA19)
- Nita Lowey (D-NY17)
- Carolyn Maloney (D-NY12)
- Doris Matsui (D-CA6)
- Grace Meng (D-NY6)
- Jerrold Nadler (D-NY10)
- Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA40)
- Jackie Speier (D-CA14)
- Eric Swalwell (D-CA15)
- Mike Thompson (D-CA5)
- Paul Tonko (D-NY20)
- Norma Torres (D-CA35)
- Peter Welch (D-VT0)
9 House Democrats moved away from impeachment:
- Lois Frankel (D-FL21)
- John Garamendi (D-CA3)
- Alcee Hastings (D-FL20)
- Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY8)
- John Lewis (D-GA5)
- Bobby Rush (D-IL1)
- José Serrano (D-NY15)
- Elijah Cummings (D-MD7)
- Marc Veasey (D-TX33)
This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.
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