Two Democrats side with Republicans again, drawing threats from their own leadership

Reps. Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez voted with House Republicans for the second time in weeks to advance floor debate on a Russia sanctions bill and EPA rollbacks, and Democratic leaders are now openly threatening consequences.

Golden, a Maine Democrat, and Gluesenkamp Perez, a Washington Democrat, crossed party lines Tuesday to provide the votes Republicans needed to open debate on the late Sen. Lindsey Graham's Russian sanctions bill and on measures to roll back Environmental Protection Agency regulations. Two Republicans, Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, voted against the procedural rule, leaving GOP leaders short of the votes they needed to move forward without Democratic help. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania only voted "yes" after extended talks with House leaders.

The result: two rank-and-file Democrats bailed out the Republican majority on a procedural vote that was on the verge of failing, for the second time this month. And the Democratic leadership response has been swift, public, and punitive.

Democratic leaders call the votes "a significant breach of trust"

Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez first broke with their caucus on September 1, when they voted with Republicans on a procedural rule that helped advance a continuing resolution. That vote triggered a joint statement from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar:

"The decision by two of our colleagues to blindside the entire House Democratic Caucus and join with the Republican majority to pass a procedural rule on the brink of failing represents a significant breach of trust. It is an action that necessitates a serious response, and we have asked the Committee on Caucus Rules to take this up in short order."

Clark went further the next day. She told CNN that committee assignments should be reserved for loyal members of the caucus.

"In my opinion, we need team players. And team players get to sit on exclusive committees."

The threat was not subtle. Democrats have used committee seats as leverage before. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied former Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York a seat on the House Judiciary Committee after Rice voted against Pelosi for speaker. Pelosi also rewarded members who endorsed her leadership after previously opposing her. The message from the top of the Democratic caucus has always been clear: fall in line, or lose your perch.

Pelosi herself weighed in on Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez's September 1 vote, saying she never faced this kind of defiance during her own speakership:

"Voting for the rule is something that I, as Speaker, never, We didn't even consider that anybody would do that. We never had that problem, so I'm disappointed that they did that."

Zero rules votes failed under Pelosi. Under Speaker Mike Johnson, nine have. That gap says something about the difference between how the two parties enforce discipline, and about how much room individual members have to vote their conscience.

Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez say Ukraine, not party loyalty, drove their votes

Both Democrats framed their defiance in terms their leadership would have a hard time attacking head-on. Golden told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Russia sanctions bill, which passed the Senate in August with broad bipartisan support, was too important to let die over a procedural technicality.

"Last month, the Senate passed the Russia sanctions bill. It's a bill that will go a long way toward supporting our allies in Ukraine, who I have supported ever since Putin's invasion began. This is our last week in session until November. The stakes for Ukraine are too high to let this good bill, which already passed the Senate with overwhelming, bipartisan support, die as a result of a procedural vote. I look forward to voting for the Russia sanctions bill when it hits the floor."

Gluesenkamp Perez, who represents a district she says includes one of the largest Ukrainian communities in America, posted a statement on X making a similar case. She pointed to the 86 senators who voted to send the bill to the House as evidence of its broad support.

"I'm proud to represent one of the largest Ukrainian communities in America, people who have lost fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in the fight to defeat fascism. I'll always stand with my community's values, and am grateful for the 86 senators who voted to send this bill to the house. My vote today gets us one step closer to enacting these sanctions into law and I look forward to voting tomorrow to cut off the flow of Russian oil money fueling this war."

The bipartisan deal on the Russia oil sanctions bill had already cleared the Senate with an overwhelming margin. Letting it stall in the House over a procedural vote, because Democratic leadership demanded lockstep opposition to every Republican-sponsored rule, would have been difficult to explain to voters back home.

Golden also cited his September 1 vote as an effort to advance the Northeast Lobstermen Protection Act, which would extend a pause on strict federal fishing rules for lobster crews in his home state. That is a bread-and-butter issue for a Maine congressman, not an act of ideological rebellion.

Gluesenkamp Perez's office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation's request for comment.

Neither Golden nor Gluesenkamp Perez is new to bucking party orthodoxy

The two Democrats have a track record of independence that predates this month's votes. During the 2024 presidential race, both publicly acknowledged that Donald Trump was likely to win. Golden wrote that while he did not plan to vote for Trump, "Donald Trump will win. And I'm OK with that." Gluesenkamp Perez said flatly that "Biden is going to lose to Trump," as the Washington Free Beacon reported. Those statements put both members at odds with a party establishment that was still rallying behind its incumbent president.

They are not the only Democrats who have broken with their party's leadership in recent years. Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez's repeated procedural defections fit a pattern of Democratic members who represent competitive or right-leaning districts finding that rigid party loyalty costs more than it's worth.

Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has broken with Democrats on issues ranging from AI policy to border security, siding with the Trump administration over his own caucus. Even figures outside Congress have started moving. Bill Maher, a longtime liberal commentator, has openly criticized Democrats as cowardly and said he could vote for JD Vance in 2028.

Republican dysfunction made Democratic votes necessary

Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez's votes would not have mattered if Republicans could hold their own caucus together. Nine rules votes have failed under Speaker Johnson, a number that would have been unthinkable under Pelosi's iron grip. The problem is structural. When former Speaker Kevin McCarthy fought for the gavel in January 2023, he made a series of concessions to House Freedom Caucus members, including lowering the threshold to oust a speaker to a single member. That concession gave any individual Republican enormous leverage over the floor schedule.

Matt Gaetz, then a Republican congressman from Florida, used that leverage in October 2023 to file a motion to vacate the chair and remove McCarthy. The precedent stuck. Under Johnson, hardline members have repeatedly voted against procedural rules to extract concessions or register protest. On June 30, thirteen Republicans voted against a rule that would have opened debate on attaching the Safeguard America Voter Eligibility Act, a bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, to the National Defense Authorization Act, because they disagreed with how Johnson planned to attach it.

On September 1, five Republicans voted to shut down the floor entirely to protest the continuing resolution. Bipartisan cooperation has become a recurring feature of this Congress, sometimes by design, sometimes by necessity.

That is the backdrop against which Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez stepped in. Republican leaders could not get Harris and Norman to vote yes. They needed extended talks to bring Burchett, Clyde, and Perry on board. Without two Democrats willing to cross the aisle, the rule would have failed, and the Russia sanctions bill, which 86 senators supported, would have stalled with the House about to leave for recess until November.

Leadership threats reveal the real priority

What stands out about the Democratic leadership's response is what they chose to punish. Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez voted to advance a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill that passed the Senate with overwhelming support. They voted to let the House debate EPA rollbacks, not to pass them, but to debate them. And for that, Jeffries, Clark, and Aguilar called it "a significant breach of trust" and referred the matter to the Committee on Caucus Rules.

Clark's warning about committee assignments was the sharpest version of the threat. In the House minority, committee seats are one of the few sources of real power. Stripping them from members who voted to advance a Ukraine sanctions bill would send a message, but not the one Democratic leaders probably intend.

The message voters in Maine and southwest Washington would hear is simple: Democratic leadership cares more about procedural control than about sanctioning Russia, supporting Ukraine, or protecting lobstermen. Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez represent districts where that kind of rigidity does not play well. Both have shown they are willing to pay the internal price for voting with their constituents instead of their caucus.

When a party's leadership treats a vote to debate a bipartisan sanctions bill as a firing offense, the problem is not the two members who crossed the aisle. The problem is a leadership that cannot tell the difference between disloyalty and common sense.