Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) secured the top Democratic seat on the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, winning a vote of the full House Democratic Caucus in the crowded race to replace former Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who died last month of esophageal cancer.

Garcia bested another committee Democrat, Rep. Stephen Lynch (Mass.), in the closed-door, secret-ballot vote in the Capitol basement. The tally was 150-63. 

The list of candidates had initially been longer, but two other members of the committee Reps. Kweisi Mfume (Md.) and Jasmine Crockett (Texas) dropped out of the contest after receiving scant support from the Democratic Steering Committee, a leadership-heavy panel that staged a preliminary vote Monday night. 

“The job is to work together this doesn’t work without a team,” Crockett said Tuesday. “It was a signal from leadership that they were not interested in working with me. It’s not like it was a little signal. It was a loud signal. And I know how to read the tea leaves.”

Garcia’s victory puts him on the dais of one of Congress’s most potent committees, one with subpoena powers and a sweeping jurisdiction that covers virtually every facet of the federal government. While the minority Democrats have no authority to dictate the panel’s direction in the current Congress, they have a good shot at flipping control of the House in next year’s midterms a scenario that would put the gavel in Garcia’s hand and lend him broad powers to investigate the many controversial actions of the second Trump administration.

After winning Tuesday’s vote, Garcia vowed to do just that.

“It is, I think, an opportunity for us to continue holding the corruption of Donald Trump accountable,” Garcia told reporters. “There is a big agenda in front of us.”

Garcia’s victory is extraordinary for a lawmaker so green, as he’s only in his third year on Capitol Hill. And it’s especially striking in a caucus that has a long tradition of rewarding seniority, and the experience that comes with it, when choosing committee leaders. Indeed, Connolly in December had easily won the seat over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) a clear victory for seniority that dissuaded Ocasio-Cortez from seeking the seat again after Connolly’s death.

Yet the preference given to committee veterans has eroded gradually in recent years, as Democrats have sought a generational shift to a younger crop of leaders after decades with more senior members at the helm.

That shift seemed to diminish the advantage of Lynch, 70, the most senior of the four initial candidates who has served as the interim ranking member of the committee since Connolly’s deteriorating health forced him to step down from that role in April. A former ironworker and union leader, Lynch had argued that his long experience in the Oversight trenches made him best suited to take the seat permanently. 

But his pitch wasn’t enough to overcome the challenge from Garcia, who was endorsed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, of which he is a member, and appeared also to get a boost from his colleagues in California, which boasts the largest Democratic delegation in the House. 

“Well, I’m a Californian,” former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said as she revealed her support for Garcia. 

Pelosi, whose father and brother both served as mayors of Baltimore, also cited Garcia’s experience as a former mayor of Long Beach, Calif.

“I’m partial to mayors,” she said. “[Garcia] was a mayor for eight years in a significant city in California, so he knows management, and he knows messaging.” 

Garcia was quick to praise the experience of Lynch and other longtime members of the Oversight panel, vowing to tap them as a resource as the committee seeks to hold Trump accountable. But he also acknowledged generational concerns likely played a key factor in his win.

“This party, and us at this moment I think we’re looking at expanding the tent,” he said. “And I think experience is incredibly important. … But I also think it’s an opportunity to bring in newer voices to the leadership and to this committee.”

Updated at 11:58 a.m. EDT