Washington — Republican lawmakers are huddling on Capitol Hill on Friday to try to find consensus on a new nominee for speaker of the House, one day after Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who earned the nomination just two days ago, abruptly announced his decision to drop out of contention.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who lost to Scalise in that initial vote on Wednesday, renewed his bid for the gavel ahead of a closed-door meeting of the GOP conference Friday morning. He was soon joined in the race by a new challenger, Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia.
“I believe if we as Republicans are going to be in the majority, we have to do things the right way, and we’re not doing that right now,” Scott said on Capitol Hill. “Eight Republicans, with 208 Democrats, to take the speaker of the House out — that’s the wrong thing to do. So we have to stop that stuff. If we want to be the majority party, we have to act like the majority party.”
Jordan, who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, confirmed ahead of the meeting that he will seek the party’s nomination again, telling reporters he feels “real good about us having the votes.” But he faces an uphill climb to convince moderate Republicans to back his bid, since a number of Scalise’s supporters, as well as several of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s allies, have indicated they oppose his candidacy.
JULIA NIKHINSON/AFP via Getty Images
Whether Scott can marshall enough support from Jordan’s detractors and Scalise’s former supporters to become the party’s nominee remains to be seen. Members are currently meeting for a candidates’ forum, where Jordan and Scott will make their case to their GOP colleagues.
Some members said they hope to select a nominee on Friday and move quickly to a vote on the House floor. But any nominee would require near unanimity among Republican members to overcome expected Democratic opposition, and a quick vote is complicated by a spate of absences that further narrow any candidate’s path to victory in the full chamber. Just 209 out of the 221 GOP House members were at the party’s earlier closed-door meeting, lawmakers said, although those who were absent could in theory be called back to vote relatively quickly.
“We’ll see how the candidate forum goes. We feel good. We do have members, I think both Republican and Democrat members, who aren’t in town,” Jordan said. “So, we got to allow some time to come back.”
“A ship that doesn’t have a rudder”
Scalise’s announcement Thursday evening that he was dropping out came amid mounting opposition to his bid from the fractured GOP conference’s right flank, effectively preventing him from being able to secure the 217 votes likely needed to win the gavel in a vote on the House floor. Scalise told reporters he withdrew in hopes that a candidate could emerge who could bring the party together.
“Our conference still has to come together and is not there,” he said. “There are still some people that have their own agendas, and I was very clear, we have to have everybody put their agendas on the side and focus on what this country needs.”
His exit added to the chaos that has enveloped the GOP conference since McCarthy was ousted from the speakership in an unprecedented vote last week. The House is now in its second week without a leader, leaving one chamber of Congress effectively paralyzed until a speaker is elected.
“We are a ship that doesn’t have a rudder right now,” Rep. Mark Alford, a freshman member from Texas, told reporters Thursday. “This is a troubling time for members who came here to do serious business.”
The dysfunction among Republicans comes as lawmakers are confronting a fast-approaching Nov. 17 deadline to fund the government and rising pressure to respond to the war in Israel and Gaza following the brutal attacks by Hamas nearly one week ago.
Supporters of Jordan, who secured 99 votes during the secret ballot vote earlier this week, have suggested he can win the gavel, though his candidacy is already running into resistance from moderate Republicans. Jordan co-founded the conservative House Freedom Caucus and was a key player in the 2013 government shutdown. The Ohio Republican is also one of the most vocal defenders of former President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill and is playing a leading role in the impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
While Jordan’s allies have said he is the only Republican who can win 217 votes, Rep. Mike Garcia of California indicated some GOP lawmakers would be turned away from supporting the Ohio conservative following the week’s events.
“There’s an academic debate about whether we reward, you know, the tyranny of the minority in this case,” he said, adding that while he supports Jordan, “there’s enough people that would see what has happened and transpired over the last 40 hours to not support him, that we’re going to have the same problem with Jordan that we had with Scalise. So, I think it’s a math problem.”
The prospect of a protracted fight among Republicans over a speaker candidate has prompted some questions of whether the House should act to temporarily expand the authority of Rep. Patrick McHenry, who is leading the chamber in the interim as speaker pro tempore. McHenry was appointed to the post by McCarthy following his removal, though the historic nature of the situation has left the House with no precedent to reference.
The scope of McHenry’s authority beyond overseeing the election of a new speaker is unclear.
Some members have also raised the possibility of joining with Democrats to support a consensus candidate if Jordan fails to secure the required support to become speaker. North Carolina Rep. Greg Murphy raised McHenry and Reps. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma and Byron Donalds of Florida as potential “compromise” candidates.
“There’s some real quality people in there that are smart, not only intellectually, but politically, who can fundraise and lead the conference in the direction because our fight is not with each other, it shouldn’t be with each other,” Murphy told reporters.
Scott MacFarlane and Ellis Kim contributed to this report.
