Clarke Tucker running for Congress in Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District, and he’s the latest candidate to promise not to back House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for speaker if Democrats wrest control of the lower chamber in 2018.

Tucker spelled out his aversion to Pelosi in a new campaign ad that also takes a swipe at incumbent Republican Rep. French Hill, who has painted his Democratic opponent as “the hand-picked candidate of Nancy Pelosi’s liberal Washington allies.”


“Congressman Hill opened his campaign by attacking me, knowing full well that I’ve said from day one that I won’t vote for Nancy Pelosi,” Tucker said, standing in a living room gazing at a television with Hill on the screen.

“We’re better than that,” he said. “The truth is I’m the only candidate in this race that’s worked with both parties to protect healthcare, strengthen education, and empower our entrepreneurs. I’ll do the same in Congress, because my priorities are our families and our future, not the politics of the past.”

The truth is, Tucker’s using the politics of today to unseat his Republican incumbent with a lot of help from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the national party’s fundraising arm for House candidates.

He follows in the footsteps of Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, who disavowed Pelosi to win a tight race in special election earlier this year.

Much like Lamb, Tucker contends he’s “very frustrated with the leadership of the House in both parties.”

He told The New York Times in March that Lamb’s district is “a lot like the one I’m running in,” and said he’s following Lambs playbook because “voters are interested in changing the leadership in Washington.”

Hill, of course, has a different perspective.

“Clarke Tucker is the hand-picked candidate of Nancy Pelosi’s liberal Washington allies because they know Clarke Tucker supports higher taxes and bigger government and that French Hill will continue to champion lower taxes and a stronger economy,” Hill spokesman Mike Siegel told The Associated Press.

Tucker’s new campaign ad comes just a couple weeks after Wisconsin Democrat Dan Kohl made a similar declaration in his race to unseat Republican incumbent Rep. Glenn Grothman.

“If I’m elected to Congress I will not vote for Nancy Pelosi for leader of the Democrats,” Kohl told WITI.

“When I get to Washington, I’ll see what my choices are,” he said, “but I do think we need change coming on the Democratic side.”

Republicans are running ads in districts across the country to point out the similarities between Democrat candidates and Pelosi’s San Francisco values, mostly because fewer than one in four Americans like her.

A Bay Area NBC affiliate recently reported Pelosi intends to run for Speaker of the House if Democrats take control, but also pointed out that “this may not be good news for Democrats.”

“We might like Nancy Pelosi in the Bay Area, but America doesn’t,” the reporter said. “Things that are more popular than Nancy Pelosi, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, include the NRA, current Speaker Paul Ryan, even Donald Trump among all Americans, Donald Trump is far more liked than Nancy Pelosi.”

The poll showed only 21 percent like Pelosi, while 24 percent like Paul Ryan, and both the NRA and Donald Trump are liked by 37 percent of Americans.