[This story was updated at 4:14 p.m., Tuesday, 2/28/2023, to include additional reporting.]
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Tuesday elected Rep. Joanna McClinton of Philadelphia as speaker of the chamber, the first woman and second black speaker.
McClinton’s election comes on the heels of Rep. Mark Rozzi’s resignation as speaker after the Berks County Democrat declared he had achieved his goals by passing a proposed constitutional amendment and legislation that would allow survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue their perpetrators.
McClinton, a former public defender, recognized the significance of her election, remembering Rep. K. Leroy Irvis, the first Black speaker of the House of Representatives, and the first women elected to the Legislature and to senior positions, including Republican Crystal Bird Fauset, Speaker of the House of Representatives, the first Black woman elected to the Legislature any state.
“But we still have a lot of work to do,” McClinton said, noting that no woman has ever served as governor or U.S. senator in Pennsylvania. “And we, at this point, have to pinch ourselves because it took almost 250 years for a woman to stand at that desk, not just to pray, but to pick up a gavel.”
Referring to two months of gridlock that followed the House’s inability to agree on rules of operation, McClinton said this moment also calls for real changes in the way lawmakers work.
“There have been times when we’ve had policy debates where we don’t agree on everything, but I encourage us to find the issues where we have common ground,” McClinton said.
She also said she would lead the House in opposing all forms of discrimination.
“We will have policies that protect women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ because democracy was born in Pennsylvania. It shouldn’t matter who you love. It shouldn’t matter if you pray, it shouldn’t matter how you were born or what your skin color is,” McClinton said.
In his nomination speech for McClinton, Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia said she had worked to secure a career as a public defender, as a top aide to Sen. Anthony Williams of Philadelphia and as a state representative.
“You have been a phenomenal member of this body. You have been an outstanding leader in our caucus, and you are the kind of leader that we need to lead Pennsylvania to a better place at a time like this,” Kenyatta said.
McClinton takes control of the House after disagreement over which party can rightfully take control following the death of longtime Rep. Anthony DeLuca and the resignations of Reps. Austin Davis, who was elected lieutenant governor, and Rep. Summer Lee, who was elected to the House of Representatives USA. All three were Democratic legislators from Allegheny County.
McClinton was originally nominated for speaker on Jan. 3, when the House convened for the first day of the current session. With narrow voting margins, neither side was able to choose their candidate for speaker.
Rozzi was elected with the support of 16 Republicans in a compromise in which he promised to lead the chamber as an independent. He has drawn the ire of Republicans, including a key ally in his fight to secure justice for child molestation victims.
While Rozzi has pushed for support for survivors of violence and worked to resolve the impasse over the rules of the chamber, he has expressed ambivalence about whether he will remain as speaker.
In his resignation speech, Rozzi said he never wanted to be a representative of the state, much less speaker of the House of Representatives, until he realized that the General Assembly put political goals of special interests ahead of the nation. As a survivor of violence himself, he ran to advocate for his childhood friends who had experienced the trauma of sexual assault.
But after his legislation giving victims of violence a two-year window to renew expired legal claims against attackers failed session after session, Rozzi said he realized he was unable to make change as a rank-and-file lawmaker.
“Therefore, when the opportunity to become Speaker of the House arose, I took it without hesitation. I thought I would finally be able to change something. I thought I could finally put my children above my special interests. But once again my perspective has changed,” Rozzi said.
Through a series of public hearings, Rozzi gathered public opinion on how Pennsylvanians want the General Assembly to work to formulate novel ones.
Last week he announced that “Rozzi’s regulations” would focus on ending the ability of majority party leaders to hide legislation in committees, changing the partisan makeup of committees, and giving rank-and-file members more power to move legislation forward.
Rozzi expressed belief in the need for reforms by Republicans in the state Senate to tie a constitutional amendment for survivors to proposals that would require every voter to show identification at the ballot box and that would give the General Assembly veto power over regulations of the Legislature’s executive branch.
“No member should be forced to choose between providing support for children who have been raped or disenfranchising countless other Pennsylvanians,” Rozzi said.
He also scolded House Republicans for trying to exploit the death of a colleague and the historic election of Pennsylvania’s first black lieutenant governor and congresswoman to gain an undeserved majority in the House.
“The reality is that I am only standing at this podium because [of] what’s wrong with harrisburg. Not what is right,” he said.
Rozzi called Republicans’ support for his election an attempt to “fraud the House and elect a member of the other party as Speaker to do their bidding.”
In a statement released after Rozzi’s resignation, GOP leader Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, said the support for Rozzi’s election was an attempt to build trust that will allow the House to move forward.
“Unfortunately, despite attempting to find a unique solution for an evenly divided House, Rep. Rozzi has openly violated that trust essentially from the moment he was elected,” Cutler said.
“Right now, the House is in dire need of a reset, and I remain committed to working with anyone who is willing to work with us to find solutions,” Cutler said. “However, the only way we will be able to move forward is to lower the temperature that has risen due to an unforeseen lack of integrity that has limited our ability to work across the aisle.”
