By Ryan Grim and Julian Andreone – Drop Site News
Maybe they waited too long for the cake pops to come back around.
After 11 Democrats missed the vote to impeach War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday, an ill-timed Tuesday reception hosted by the political action committee Elect Democratic Women (EDW) has become the focus of increasing attention. According to an RSVP list of the event obtained by Drop Site News, the party was studded with representatives of the country’s top weapons makers and the city’s most powerful defense contractor lobbying firms.
A motion from Republicans to effectively kill the impeachment resolution passed 211-204. Four of the missing Democrats blamed their tardiness on traffic getting back to the Capitol from an event.
The unexcused absences have sent an angry Democratic base, which was already clamoring for leadership changes in the House and Senate and an end to the war with Iran, all the way up the wall. The complete list of EDW partygoers is unlikely to calm anyone down.
The event, billed as a “New Member Reception,” was expected to be attended by a slew of lobbyists for weapons makers, AI companies, crypto firms, insurance companies, Big Pharma, and others looking to press their case for federal largesse, according to the event RSVP list. EDW, chaired by Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fl.), served as a major pass-through for AIPAC cash in the 2026 cycle. AIPAC’s super PAC United Democracy Project funneled at least $2.35 million into EDW Action this year, according to federal campaign finance records.
The event was to be attended, according to the list, by 132 lobbyists, The defense industry was represented by at least two people from Lockheed Martin, as well as representatives from top defense lobbying firms like Cornerstone Public Affairs, Invariant, Akin Gump, Porter Group, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, K&L Gates, and BGR Group. AI and Big Tech were represented by lobbyists from Anthropic, Google, Dell, Salesforce, Airbnb, and Intel. Big Pharma had people from PhRMA, Genentech, AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield, CVS, and Elevance Health. Prediction markets were championed by a Kalshi lobbyist while cryptocurrencies were advocated for by someone from Coinbase. And, for good measure, two lobbyists from Bayer-Monsanto, the company responsible for releasing the cancer-causing weed killer RoundUp, attended the bash. Major firms like Walmart, Comcast, and Delta were in attendance, as were a handful of major unions.
The event ran from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. House leadership scheduled the vote to impeach Hegseth at 5:30 p.m., and the vote closed at 6:05.
The “run of show” had Frankel giving remarks at 5:00, cutting it close to the vote time, given rush hour traffic down Pennsylvania Avenue from the venue, Goldfinch Social.
Reps. Julia Brownley (D-Calif.), Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), and Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) missed the vote and attended the event. Brownley is an executive board member of EDW and Stansbury is a board member. Eight others missed the vote–Nancy Pelosi, Haley Stevens, Marilyn Strickland, Frederica Wilson, Jonathan Jackson, Steven Horsford, and Lou Correa. Pelosi said she was attending a Veteran’s Day event; Horsford cited a “personal emergency.” Jackson made it to the steps of the Capitol on time and was seen filming a social media video before the vote was gaveled to a close, but inexplicably missed the vote. He said he is taking “full accountability.” Stevens was endorsed by EDW but was thrown out of the Michigan Democratic Party for endorsing the Republican in the Michigan Senate race. She has been hanging out in the Republican cloakroom during votes. Correa suffered a genuine emergency: a heart attack.
Stansbury was contrite. “I am so sorry,” she posted to social media Wednesday morning. “There is no one who is more disappointed in myself than me that I was not here the moment that that gavel dropped.”
Pettersen has been less forthcoming. Drop Site reported Tuesday night that some members had been at an EDW event, and the local Colorado media pressed Pettersen as to whether she was one of them, but she initially declined to say, allowing only she had been “denied the ability to vote.”
“Her team twice refused to tell us where she was. Our Marshall Zelinger found that Pettersen was at a Super PAC party,” Local9 News in Colorado reported.
“Last night I was late to the floor and there is no excuse for that,” she said in a follow-up statement. “I was an Electing Democratic Women [sic] event celebrating the record-breaking number of new women members who were just elected, and unfortunately was significantly delayed with the blockade on Independence Avenue.”
The Colorado local news anchor went on: “So why the hesitancy about being at an EDW event?” he asked, before explaining: “EDW Action is the Super PAC for EDW. It took in more than $2.3 million this year from a Super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, the group that helps elect congressmembers who support a strong relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Critics describe EDW Action as a conduit for AIPAC money.”
The rest of EDW’s executive board includes Reps. Joyce Beatty, Debbie Dingell, and Norma Torres. Board members include Reps. Nikki Budzinski, Laura Friedman, Julie Johnson, Jennifer McClellan, and Jill Tokuda. (Johnson lost a primary to Justice Democrat Frederick Douglass Haynes in Texas and is not returning to office.)
Frankel quit the Congressional Progressive Caucus in November 2023 over complaints that the caucus was too critical of Israel; she had previously been one of just six CPC members to vote to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib for using the slogan, “From the river to the sea.” Earlier this year, according to Democratic candidate Jamie Belsito, Frankel told Belsito that EDW could back her in a Massachusetts primary and funnel money from AIPAC, AI interests, and crypto companies into her race. When Belsito objected, saying she didn’t want the money whether it was direct or through a pass-through, EDW endorsed a rival candidate (who lost to incoming freshman Dan Koh).
After the effort to impeach Hegseth failed, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark released a statement claiming, “Republicans just blocked the House from impeaching Pete Hegseth,” calling the GOP “a disgrace” for “protecting an unqualified, incompetent man over our servicemembers.”
Clark, during a meeting of her deputy whips Wednesday, told her colleagues they had let the American people down.
She also reportedly noted that seven Republicans also missed the vote, so that even if Democrats had arrived in time, the GOP had votes to spare they could add to the board. It’s not obvious that her claim is true. Only two of the seven Republicans who missed the vote won re-election last Tuesday, making it unlikely they would have been trying to abstain, as members sometimes do, so as not to face backlash in their districts.
This story was updated to add Laura Gillen to the tally of delinquent Democrats.