NANCY PELOSI, the new House of Representatives Speaker, received a huge blow to her authority yesterday in a bitterly contested leadership battle.

Congressional Democrats voted by a margin of 149-86 to elect Steny Hoyer as their House Majority leader — effectively the Speaker’s deputy — despite Ms Pelosi’s aggressive and unprecedentedly active canvassing of support for John Murtha, a rival candidate.

Her intervention, in a contest over which she had previously promised to stay neutral, has raised question marks over her judgment even before the first woman Speaker in America formally takes power on Capitol Hill.

The leadership election has left the Democrats’ image for unity and probity badly tarnished, while Republicans, who last week were shattered by defeat, are now rubbing their hands with glee — and their eyes in disbelief.

Dark storm clouds were gathered over Washington yesterday lunchtime as Ms Pelosi emerged from the election meeting with her Congressional Democrat colleagues. All sides tried to put on their best face for the press, as Ms Pelosi said: “We have had our debates and we have had our disagreements. Now that is over. As they say in church, let there be peace on Earth, let the healing begin.” She said that Mr Hoyer had “come out a big winner” and gave him a little hug. In turn Mr Hoyer, her deputy for the past three years and a man with whom she has long since had a strained relationship, paid a warm tribute to her leadership.

However, on Sunday Ms Pelosi had released a letter endorsing Mr Murtha’s candidacy. For a Speaker to take a public position on a leadership election is itself highly unusual. But the strong-arm tactics that were later deployed against newly elected Congressmen — which are alleged to have included threats to block their appointment to key committees if they did not back Mr Murtha — has dismayed even some of her supporters.

Mr Murtha is a close ally of Ms Pelosi, as well as being a strong and vocal critic of the Iraq war. Aides have suggested that her endorsement was motivated by personal loyalty. But she said yesterday that her intervention had been because she “thought that would be the best way to bring an end to the war in Iraq”.

Worse still for the Democrats, Ms Pelosi’s championing of Mr Murtha has switched the spotlight back on to their patchy ethical record, only a week after being swept back to power on Capitol Hill on a promise to clean up Congress.

Mr Murtha has become known as the “go to” guy on the House’s defence appropriations committee for defence firms wanting government business. The two main beneficiaries of his largesse include a lobbying company that employed his brother and another founded by a former aide.

In the 1980s, Mr Murtha was originally named as a co-conspirator in the Abscam bribery scandal, an FBI sting operation in which agents dressed as Arab sheikhs and offered bribes to politicians. Although he was never charged, an undercover video taken by the FBI and being circulated on conservative websites this week, paints an unflattering picture. It shows Mr Murtha, after being offered a bribe, saying: “I want to deal with you guys awhile before I make any transactions. After we’ve done some business, well, then I might change my mind.”

At the same time the Democrats have opened a second infighting sideshow this week by directing a torrent of criticism at Howard Dean, the party’s national chairman, who is being accused of failing to make the most of a once-in-a-generation wave of support. James Carville and Stan Greenberg, veterans from Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, said that the Democrats could have picked up 10 to 20 more Congressional seats last week if Mr Dean had concentrated resources on marginal races rather than investing millions of dollars in rebuilding state parties. “I would describe his leadership as Rusmfeldian in its incompetence,” Mr Carville said.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have done little to show that they are reaching out to the centrist voters who rejected them in midterm elections last week. This week the party’s senators decided to bring back Trent Lott as their deputy leader, four years after he was ousted from the top post for making racially charged remarks.

President Bush had publicly disassociated himself from Mr Lott in 2002 when as Majority Leader Mr Lott showered praise on Strom Thurmond, who had run for the White House 54 years earlier on a platform opposing efforts to “force the negro into our homes, our schools and our churches”.

Mr Lott has since apologised.

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