Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) isn’t taking kindly to the weeks-long impasse from House Republicans in picking their next speaker, which most recently featured fellow Ohioan Jim Jordan.
“You’re harming the republic,” Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, told POLITICO. “Wake up. It isn’t so important that you’re on CNN or what was that station — what? Fox?”
“He’s being empowered by this. He doesn’t care about the Congress. He took an oath. But look what’s happening: [He’s] heavily involved in the breakdown of the legislative process,” she said.
Asked about her relationship with the Ohio conservative, the senior House appropriator Kaptur replied: “He doesn’t look at it as I do — in the bowels of the committees and working to move bills to support the government of the United States. He looks at it as an opportunity to build his movement.”
Kaptur was first elected to the House in 1982 and is the dean of the Ohio congressional delegation.