By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio- House Democrats voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to nominate Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in a 203-32 vote.

Pelosi ran uncontested and faces a full vote in the House in a public forum the first week in January.

Thirty-two Dems voted against her nomination, hardly enough to oust Pelosi, who has led the Democrats in the House since 2003.

A cadre of congressional Democrats had campaigned this year with the promise of working to oust the relatively popular Pelosi, 78, as the chief Democratic leader of the House.

The first woman to lead a majority party in congress, Pelosi was House Minority Whip from 2002 to 2003, and was House Minority Leader from 2003 to 2007 before she became speaker of the House in 2007 when the Republicans lost the House, the Republicans again gaining control of the House in 2011 and Pelosi stepping down as House speaker and up again as House Minority Leader.

With the Republicans losing the House to the Dems in the November midterm elections, the House speaker position opened up again for Democratic leadership, and Pelosi wants the job, again.

Ohio 11th Congressional District Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat who is one of two Blacks in congress from Ohio and whose congressional district includes most of the majority Black areas between Cleveland and Akron and several of Cleveland's eastern suburbs, backed Pelosi as did Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Columbus, and Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat whose 9th congressional district extends to Cleveland.

Fudge and Beatty are the only two Blacks in congress from Ohio.

A Youngstown-area Democrat,  Congressman Tim Ryan, who tried unsuccessfully two years ago to oust Pelosi as House Minority Leader with Fudge's help but lost by a 2-1 margin, voted against Pelosi and joined 15 other members of the incoming Congress committed  as late this week to withholding their vote for Pelosi

Fudge toyed with the issue of opposing Pelosi for speaker of the House this year.That changed last Tuesday when the congresswoman decided to join Pelosi's team to fight against the right wing attack on the Democratic Party in congress, and elsewhere.

"I now join my colleagues in support of the leadership team of Pelosi," Fudge said in a press statement last week.

Some 18 congressional Democrats had originally said they would not back Pelosi to lead the House beginning in 2019, though that number pales in comparison to the number of Democrats in the House.

Going into the midterm elections there were  237 Republicans (including 1 Delegate and the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico), 197 Democrats (including 4 Delegates), and 7 vacant seats. The Senate, data show, had 51 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and 2 Independents, who both caucus with the Democrats.

Led by the METOO movement, Democrats, led by newly elected women across the country,  gained 33 seats via the midterm elections in the House and improved their control of the chamber to 228 to 198, though  at the time some nine elections around the country were still undecided.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL N