Five long years ago, Zoe Lofgren was a hero. The Bay Area representative took a lonely stand against many of her Democratic colleagues, in what became known as the SOPA fight.

SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act — was a top priority of Hollywood and other artists and creators, aimed at stifling the free flow of content on the web. Open internet advocates pushed back against the bill in 2011 and 2012, and a coalition of big platforms, online progressive groups, and tech libertarians rallied to stop it in its tracks, with Lofgren as the lead champion in the House.

The next year, Edward Snowden laid bare the secret surveillance practices of the National Security Agency, carried out in collusion with cable companies and tech platforms, and Lofgren, a key figure on the House Judiciary Committee, once again took the lead. “Lofgren has been the House Judiciary Committee’s staunchest opponent of government surveillance during the post-Snowden era,” said David Segal, head of Demand Progress, who, along with his fellow co-founder the late Aaron Swartz, was deeply involved in the battle over SOPA.

Had Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., then well into his 80s, retired from Congress, Lofgren would have been well-positioned to claim the top-ranking seat on the Judiciary Committee. Yet he ran for re-election. Again. And again. And again.

He stayed so long that Lofgren’s brand of Silicon Valley politics is now past its expiration date, her once virtuous alliance with the forces of progress and innovation curdling into a protection racket for increasingly unpopular monopolies.

Conyers on Sunday announced he is stepping down as the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, launching a battle for his successor that has pitted two Democratic rivals — Lofgren and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. — against each other. On the one hand, his resignation comes in a politically fortuitous way for Lofgren, with Conyers felled not by age but by allegations of sexual harassment. The political logic of replacing him with a woman is obvious. But then there’s Google.

The race for committee chair threatens to become the first fight over monopoly politics after the rollout of House Democrats’ “Better Deal” platform for 2018, which was built on going after concentrated power, particularly in the tech sector. Elected to Congress in 1994, Lofgren represents San Jose and the Bay Area, and is far and away the most stalwart defender of big Silicon Valley firms among House Democrats.

“It certainly may raise questions to have someone from Silicon Valley in a position where one of the key responsibilities is to oversee the conduct of Silicon Valley,” said Jonathan Kanter, a prominent antitrust attorney.

As the politics of the internet has drifted from fostering freedom and openness to reining in the platforms whose monopoly power now threatens that freedom, so too has Lofgren drifted away. And for Democrats uninterested in monopoly politics, there’s Vladimir Putin, whom the party contends tilted the 2016 election while tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube at best looked the other way.

Lofgren has been unbowed in her allegiance. When U.S. antitrust authorities came for Google during the Obama administration, Lofgren was one of the few Democrats to publicly pressure them to back off.

When the European Commission fined Google a record $2.7 billion in June of this year, as the result of an antitrust investigation, Lofgren was the only Democrat to voice outrage. Unforced, she offered a strident defense of the company:

Europe has long lamented their inability to foster innovative businesses that can compete globally with U.S. technology companies. Now, rather than offering consumers a truly competitive marketplace with European companies rivaling their American counterparts, the European Commission is attempting to regulate innovation and competition into existence. This is unfair to European consumers, and unfair to the U.S. companies participating in European markets. The United States should now take a more assertive role in ensuring a level playing field and protecting U.S. companies against overzealous and protectionist policies overseas.

In the immediate wake of the news of Conyers’s decision, an aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told the New York Times reporter who broke the story that Nadler would take over in an acting capacity.

Nadler is next in line due to his seniority, but Lofgren, who is just behind Nadler, has been calling colleagues to gin up support to challenge him, according to Democratic members of the committee who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to get in the middle of a fight between two colleagues. If Democrats take over the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, the lawmaker in the acting role would have an inside track to become full committee chair.

The committee will meet for a vote as soon as Wednesday, so Democrats have precious little time to sort things out. Nadler has effectively announced his plan to take the reins, but Lofgren wants a full caucus vote on who should get the seat. (Complicating matters is Conyers’s professed plan to return to the seat after the ethics probe into sexual assault allegations is over, a plan few Democrats want to see implemented and even fewer think is possible.)

Nadler, who was elected in 1992 and represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, has not been outspoken on the issue of antitrust and Big Tech, but he has a record of approaching the industry with skepticism. He has been an ally of creators, a position that shaped his support for SOPA. “The problem of rogue websites is real, immediate, and increasing. It harms companies across the spectrum. And its scope is staggering,” he said at the time, though he never became an official sponsor. “The Stop Online Piracy Act has broad support across the aisle here in the House, across the street in the Senate and across the country.”

When the committee took up its patent reform bill, he backed amendments that were opposed by Google, while Lofgren stood on the opposite side.

As early as 2001, he introduced legislation challenging broadband operators. “This issue really hits home,” he said at the time. “It took my service provider nearly a month to simply transfer my current Internet connection from my old district office to my new one when we moved recently. We had no e-mail or access to the Web during that entire time. I’m a Congressman, imagine what is happening to the average consumer.”