Marshall: No to Pelosi as speaker

U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., told a number of media outlets he would not vote for Nancy Pelosi to continue to serve as Speaker of the House should Democrats retain control of the U.S. House.

“I was hopeful Nancy would be able to govern from the middle,” The Associated Press quoted Marshall as saying. “But it has not worked out as I’d hoped it might.”

The Macon Telegraph quoted the congressman as saying: “My candidate’s going to be somebody who’s a centrist, preferably somebody who’s going to be speaker of the entire House.”

Marshall, whose Middle Georgia district includes Macon, but features a conservative streak, faces former state Rep. Austin Scott in next month’s general election.

“After taking $46,000 from Nancy Pelosi, voting four times to put her in charge, supporting her agenda nearly 90 percent of the time and backing her Wall Street bailout and failed stimulus, the election-eve (conversion) Jim Marshall’s making on his political deathbed doesn’t exactly merit a ‘Profile in Courage’ award,” WMAZ-TV quoted Scott as saying.

Last month, Marshall said he opposed President Obama on his position to allow the so-called cuts expire.

Marshall, along with Reps. John Barrow and Sanford Bishop, all Democrats and all members of the Blue Dog Coalition of moderate Democrats, were among 31 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives who signed a letter to Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer urging that the tax cuts remain in place.