Yahoo!News is reporting that Democrats have voted against Nancy Pelosi's pick for #2 in Congress. Instead of backing John Murtha, a career congressman with an ethics-challenged past whose almost redeemed himself by becoming the patron saint against the Iraq War, Democrats have voted in Representative Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD 5th).

More from AP :

Hoyer was elected on a vote of 149-86.

The balloting marked a personal triumph for him, but also a snub to Pelosi, moments after the rank and file selected her unanimously to become speaker when the House convenes in January.

Ouch.

I hate, nay, detest Bob Novack; yet I find a fascinating read his description of the power jockeying around these internal elections :

Hoyer is the most accomplished Democratic legislator in the House, widely respected on both sides of the aisle. He, not Pelosi, would be preparing to be speaker had he not lost to her in a 2001 contest for minority whip, thanks to nearly complete support from her huge California delegation. That put Pelosi ahead of Hoyer on the leadership escalator. While Hoyer would win a secret poll of the Democratic caucus as more qualified, Democrats cannot turn aside the first female speaker.

It was assumed that Hoyer would be given the No. 2 position of leading a Democratic majority -- until Jack Murtha announced his candidacy. Never before during his 32 low-profile years in the House could anyone have imagined Murtha seeking any leadership role. He has been a backroom distributor of federal pork who disdained public exposure, and he was in the headlines only as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1980 Abscam scandal. Murtha became an unlikely hero of the left last year when he called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

With Pelosi and Hoyer working amicably the past two years, the speaker-to-be was expected to keep her hands off the majority leader's race. Since the Nov. 7 elections, she had exhibited restraint, in public utterances and in quietly handling the ambitions of Rahm Emanuel.

Emanuel, as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was the architect of the 2006 victory. He coveted the third-ranking post of majority whip, but that put him on a collision course with the Congressional Black Caucus's candidate, Rep. James Clyburn. A ruinous competition was averted when Pelosi brokered a deal whereby Emanuel agreed to replace Clyburn as House Democratic Caucus chairman.

But Pelosi's personal pique was evident in her opposition to her rival diva from California, Rep. Jane Harman, as chairman of the House intelligence committee. In line to replace Harman is Rep. Alcee Hastings, who was once impeached as a federal judge on bribery charges.

For a party that effectively stressed a Republican climate of corruption in the recent campaign to consider placing Murtha and Hastings in its leadership astonishes a wide range of Democrats. They do not believe Murtha can defeat Hoyer, but the imminence of Hastings stuns them. Well-placed Democrats have told Pelosi she cannot permit this to happen. What they hesitate to contemplate is what lies ahead based on Pelosi's performance before she has taken the oath.