Marcia Fudge Won't Run For House Speaker, Backs Nancy Pelosi

U.S. Rep Marcia Fudge, D-Warrensville Heights, will not run for Speaker of the House. 

Fudge announced last week she was “strongly considering” the House leadership position. In a statement Tuesday, she put her support behind House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi citing assurances “that the most loyal voting bloc in the Democratic party, Black women, will have a seat at the decision-making table.”

“My consideration was due in large part to the lack of sustained efforts that ensure diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of the House,” Fudge, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in her statement.

Pelosi also announced that Fudge would chair the newly restored Elections Subcommittee in the next Congress.

Fudge said that she would focus on voting rights issues in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision that ruled a section of the Voting Rights Act to be unconstitutional.

Fudge was in the national spotlight this week for a letter she wrote in support of Lance Mason as he faced legal consequences for a 2014 attack on his wife, Aisha Fraser. Fudge was one of numerous people in Northeast Ohio’s legal and political world who submitted letters of support to the courts.

Shaker Heights police arrested Mason over the weekend in connection with Fraser’s stabbing death.