Why is Pelosi Endorsing a Conservative Democratic Representative Over His Progressive Challenger?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has recently come under fire from progressives for endorsing Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) in his re-election bid, instead of Jessica Cisneros, who is challenging Cuellar from the left in the Democratic primary. Cuellar, a conservative Democrat, has been targeted for over a year by Justice Democrats, an organization seeking to elect progressives, such as Cisneros, to Congress, due to the fact that he voted with President Trump nearly 70% of the time during the previous Congress, according to FiveThirtyEight, and that he "receives support from the NRA, private prisons, Big Oil, and the Koch Brothers,” Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of Justice Democrats, says. Given that, relative to the rest of his party, Cuellar has a conservative record in Congress, why is Pelosi enthusiastically throwing her support behind him when there is a more progressive option?

As mentioned, Cuellar is infamous among progressives for having accepted campaign contributions from the Koch brothers, as well as industries such as for-profit prisons, among others. Koch Industries has donated $5,000 to Cuellar in PAC money this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, while lobbyists for the company -- Kevin F. Kelly and Chris J. Miller, specifically -- have given a total of $2,000 to Pelosi. Meanwhile, Cuellar has collectively taken $13,200 from PACs associated with the top three lobbying clients in the for-profit prison industry -- CoreCivic, GEO Group, and Management and Training Corporation (MTC). CoreCivic lobbyists Sean G. D'Arcy and Christina Hamilton have also given Pelosi and her PAC, PAC to the Future, $1,000 overall, while Alfred Mottur, a lobbyist for MTC, has donated $4,577 to Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, whose PAC has contributed $1,000 to Pelosi.

These examples of Pelosi's campaign being financed, at least in part, by the same companies and industries as Cuellar's give an indication as to why she is choosing to support him, despite concerns that he is too conservative for the party, as well as his relatively frequent alliance with Trump. While the speaker likes to position herself as someone who stands up to the president, as long as she is supporting people like Cuellar, that claim is questionable at best.