WASHINGTON — Over a six-decade political career, Steny H. Hoyer, currently the longest-serving Democrat in the House, built a legacy of influence few can match.

When the former majority leader announced his retirement Wednesday after nearly 45 years in Congress, it marked the end of a political career that saw the Maryland Democrat rise through House leadership and remain a key voice in the party, even after relinquishing his official titles.

Accolades quickly flooded in, with colleagues from both sides of the aisle praising Hoyer as a friend and master political tactician.

“I always regarded Steny Hoyer the way a good football player looks at a Hall of Famer on the opposing team,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, R-Okla., said in a statement. “I admired him as a world-class player, wished he were on my team, and always knew I had better bring my best game anytime we were facing off on the floor or in committee.”

But Hoyer never quite reached the pinnacle of power, remaining second-in-command to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with whom he had an at-times complicated relationship. And as the years went on, Hoyer found himself increasingly isolated as a relic of changing times, an older style of centrist Democrat in a party that has seen demographic and political shifts.

“Steny entered the political scene at a time when Democratic Party politics was much more conservative and traditional in how it operated,” Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told The New York Times in 2018.

Hoyer’s brand of politics was sometimes uncompromising. He drew liberal ire ahead of the 2018 midterms for encouraging progressive candidate Levi Tillemann to drop out of his Colorado primary to clear the way for moderate Rep. Jason Crow. Tillemann had secretly recorded the conversation and shared it with The Intercept. Hoyer was unfazed by the outcry.

“[W]hat is really important from our perspective is making sure that we have a Democrat that can win in districts that are tough,” Hoyer told reporters. “So we work towards that end.”

“Leadership requires trying to make recommendations that you think will be the most effective,” he said.

His own politics have included some conservative leanings, and he still considers himself a debt hawk and a champion of congressional pay-as-you-go rules.

But he has noticeably shifted his social policy positions. Hoyer once supported the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which previously banned same-sex marriages.

He had a change of heart in 2012, announcing his support for same-sex marriage one month before his daughter came out as a lesbian. The following year, the Supreme Court found the law largely unconstitutional.

Calling his 1996 vote a “mistake,” Hoyer said he thought that civil unions would have provided equality to gay couples but came to realize there was “much more in the word [marriage] in terms of the implications for respect and support for the relationship.” He has since become a proponent of LGBTQ rights.

His legislative milestones included his role as a lead House proponent of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, landmark legislation that expanded civil rights protections to millions of people with disabilities.

Leadership climb

Hoyer’s skill as an inside operator and his smoothness before the cameras led to talk in the early 1990s that he might be a future speaker. But his advancement in leadership faced setbacks — and a quiet rivalry with Pelosi that saw the two often backing each other’s opponents.

Their relationship goes back six decades — Hoyer and Pelosi first met when they worked in the office of the late Sen. Daniel Baugh Brewster, D-Md.

Elected to Congress in 1981, Hoyer spent six years as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. He faced off against Pelosi in the 2001 race for party whip. Pelosi won, but she was elevated to minority leader following the 2002 elections, paving the way for Hoyer to take the whip job. Hoyer then won the majority leader post by beating John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, Pelosi’s pick, in a secret-ballot vote after the 2006 elections.

Massive losses in the 2010 midterms inspired a rump rebellion against Pelosi, but Hoyer deflected suggestions that he should try to overthrow his boss, backing Pelosi’s decision to stay on as minority leader. South Carolina Democrat James E. Clyburn considered challenging Hoyer for the whip post, but Pelosi intervened, appointing Clyburn to a newly created “assistant leader” position.

Within leadership, the pair challenged each other, but never directly — and their conflicts generally didn’t disrupt the operations of the Democratic Party. They could operate as a powerful team: His sway with fiscally and socially moderate Democrats complemented her grip on liberals.

And whatever conflict existed between them, the two remained cordial. “The whole time I’ve been in Congress I’ve never heard [Hoyer] say anything negative about Nancy Pelosi, ever,” former Maryland Democratic Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger said in 2007.

They kept House Democrats united to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010 with no GOP support and blocked Republican efforts to dismantle it once the GOP took the House.

More recently, Pelosi and Hoyer used the approach to win passage of key planks of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda: a bill designed to enhance U.S. competitiveness by boosting the domestic semiconductor industry and a climate, health and tax package. Both cleared the House with no Democratic defections.

Hoyer has also prided himself on his outreach across the aisle. “Even when I was president of the Maryland Senate,” where Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 3-1, “essentially I could have ignored the Republicans altogether. I did not do that,” Hoyer said in 2012.

After hearing of his retirement, former Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt called Hoyer one of his closest friends and reflected on the time they spent as opposing House whips two decades ago.

“We seldom voted the same way, unless the vote was 400 to not very many, but we talked every day,” Blunt said. “And on those days when something really hard had to be done, we over and over again figured out how to make it possible for enough Republicans and enough Democrats to be there on the final vote.”

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