Washington Democrats are split on who should be Nancy Pelosi's No. 2 when Democrats take charge and she becomes speaker in January.

In the race for House majority leader, Norm Dicks and Jim McDermott tell me they're backing Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania and Jay Inslee and Adam Smith say they're backing Pelosi's current No. 2, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer. I'm waiting to talk to Rick Larsen and Brian Baird.

Democrats will meet Thursday to elect their leaders. It's an active campaign, Dicks said, and "both sides are going all out."

The race seems like inside baseball to many. But it will help decide an important committee assignment for Dicks, Washington's senior member, and has laid bare some frustration about all the attention given Murtha when he came out in opposition to the war last year.

It's not about ideology. McDermott, the delegation's most liberal member, is part of the whip team for Murtha. Said McDermott:

"He's a centrist, at best. I'd say he's a little more further to the right than I'd like."

Dicks agrees:

"Murtha is a real centrist. He is not a big liberal -- only on the war. And he is doing that as a matter of conscious."

The war, though, is how most people came to know about Murtha. He's a former Marine and supported the invasion of Iraq. In November of last year he came out against the war and emerged as the spokesperson for the anti-war wing of House Democrats. McDermott said:

"A guy like Jack Murtha has been here for 30 years and outside whatever district he's from in Pennsylvania, I'm sure he's an absolute unknown. His one time putting his head up in public really high made him look like he was with me. When he made his announcement Jay Inslee stopped me in the hall and said, 'The apocalypse has happened. Jack Murtha's with you.

"Jack came to it from a totally different position. He started out as a supporter of the war and very big supporter of the military and wanted to be supportive of his president, and all the rest. So he was not coming from the political position I was coming from. It took him a long time, but once it was done, that was the end of it for Jack."

Murtha's standing with liberal Democrats was boosted when he was attacked by Republicans. And that's led some to the mistaken impression that Murtha leans to the left. Said Inslee:

"As far as the ideological part of this, it is kind of an interesting race because the progressive wing of the party is much more aligned with Steny on a whole host of issues -- choice, the environment, energy - then the other fellow.

"It's an interesting dynamic. I would encourage those who are on the progressive side of our party to hitch their star to Steny because he has been a very, very vocal voice on a whole bunch of progressive issues."

Maybe. But there is a lot of progressive support behind Murtha. Arianna Huffington is urging people to lobby their Democratic representatives to vote for Murtha. And she wants to see Murtha win another honor, too:

When Rick Stengel, TIME's new editor, asked me to take part in a panel in New York this Tuesday to discuss who should be the "Person of the Year", my mind immediately turned to Murtha. Why? Because, contrary to what Karl Rove would like you to believe, this election wasn't about corruption, it wasn't about a few formerly closeted homophobes, and it wasn't about spending. As I've said before, it was about three things: Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq (Click here for backup). And Murtha was a key reason the election was a referendum on Iraq.

...

I strongly urge House Dems to remember why they're even picking a Majority Leader in the first place. If it weren't for Jack Murtha, they'd be voting for Minority Leader.

"There probably won't be a whole lot of difference between a Majority Leader Murtha and a Majority Leader Hoyer," says Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics.

The Nation, in a June blog post praising Murtha and criticizing votes by Hoyer, said:

The point here is not to suggest that Murtha's a perfect progressive -- in fact, he's really an old-school New Dealer who breaks with liberals on some social issues -- or that Hoyer is Tom DeLay in Democrat drag. For instance, while Murtha's been a more consistent critic of corporate-sponsored free-trade pacts than Hoyer, both men have lifetime records of voting with the AFL-CIO around 90 percent of the time.

But the Nation makes clear it's more than just the war that attracts progressives to Murtha.

No member of the House leadership has more consistently echoed the talking points of the corporate-sponsored Democratic Leadership Council than Hoyer, who once told a DLC event that Democrats lost control of the House in 1994 because "too many Americans believed that our party had become weak on crime and national defense, incapable of making hard decisions on welfare reform and fiscal policy, and irrevocably wedded to the idea that all of our problems could be solved by government and more spending."

Inslee says he has a lot of respect for Murtha, who he says is a "dear person, has a big heart and has been a very strong leader." One reason he's backing Hoyer is the work he did to help get Democrats elected this year. Inslee said that through Hoyer's campaign work this year "he has done as much or more to get us out of Iraq as anyone in our caucus" because he was instrumental in making sure enough Democrats won to take control of the House and put the party in a position to do something about Iraq.

Hoyer campaigned in more than 80 districts. Murtha was planning on campaigning in 41.

Inslee doesn't think Murtha's or Hoyer's positions on the war should sway votes in the majority leader's race.

"They both started the war. They both voted for the war and frankly that's when the chips were down. In my opinion that was a misjudgment for both of them and I don't think either one has a leg up on that front."

In talking to Inslee about the majority leader race it seems that the Murtha-Hoyer contest has poked at sore spots about Democratic opposition to the war. He said of Murtha's high profile:

"His voice on this Iraq issue has been very important to us. It's good that the media finally gave a voice to us against the war. It has been extremely frustrating to some of us who have been fighting against the war. There were 156 Democrats against the war, but we were never given any voice.

"But when Jack surfaced, all of a sudden the media said 'There is a debate.' There's been a debate for three years. But it's been ignored. ... All of us who have been against the war since day one were treated like potted plants. I always found that kind of curious."

Dicks said he's served with Murtha for 28 years on the Defense Appropriations Subcomittee. If Murtha moves up to majority leader Dicks said he'd be in line to be chairman of the subcommittee.

The race appears to be close. Pelosi this weekend publicly backed Murtha. According to the Washington Post:

The unexpected move signaled the sizable value Pelosi gives to personal loyalty and personality preferences. Hoyer competed with her in 2001 for the post of House minority whip, while Murtha managed her winning campaign. Pelosi has also all but decided she will not name the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) to chair that panel next year, a decision pregnant with personal animus.