Tag: Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri

Jim Jordan Could Have a Long Fight Ahead

Updated at 3:46 p.m. ET on October 17, 2023

On Friday, immediately after nominating Representative Jim Jordan as their latest candidate for speaker, House Republicans took a second, secret-ballot vote. The question put to each lawmaker was simple: Would you support Jordan in a public vote on the House floor?

The results were not encouraging for the pugnacious Ohioan. Nearly a quarter of the House Republican conference—55 members—said they would not back Jordan. Given the GOP’s threadbare majority, he could afford to lose no more than three Republicans on the vote. Jordan’s bid seemed to be fizzling even faster than that of Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, whose nomination earlier in the week lasted barely a day before he bowed out in the face of opposition from within the party.

Yet, by this afternoon, Jordan had flipped dozens of holdouts to put himself closer to winning the speakership. The 55 Republicans who said last week that they wouldn’t support him had dwindled to 20 when the House voted this afternoon. He earned a total of 200 votes on the floor; he’ll need 217 to win. Jordan will now try to replicate the strategy that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy used to capture the top House post in January: wearing down his opposition, vote by painful vote. It took McCarthy 15 ballots to secure the speakership, but Jordan may not need that many. The Republicans who voted against him on the floor have not displayed the defiance that characterized the conservatives who overthrew McCarthy. Several of them have told reporters that they could be persuaded to vote for Jordan, or would not stand in the way if he neared the threshold of 217 votes needed to win.

Read: Steve Scalise bows out

Should he secure those final votes, Jordan’s election would represent a major victory for the GOP hardliners who, led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, toppled McCarthy with the hope of replacing him with a more combative, ideological conservative. The switch would also give Donald Trump, who endorsed Jordan, something he’s never had in his seven years as the Republican Party’s official and unofficial standard-bearer: a House speaker fully committed to his cause. Although McCarthy and the previous GOP speaker, Paul Ryan, accommodated the former president, Jordan has been his champion; as documented by the House committee on January 6, Jordan was deeply involved in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and urged then–Vice President Mike Pence to throw out electoral votes from states that Trump was contesting.

His election would look a lot like Trump’s, each the result of establishment Republicans falling in line with a leader many of them swore they’d never support. Throughout Trump’s four years in the White House, GOP lawmakers, aides, and even members of the Cabinet sharply criticized the president in private, either to reporters or to their own colleagues, while offering unequivocal support and praise in public. That dynamic played out for Jordan this afternoon, when the floor vote revealed that dozens of the Republicans who’d opposed him in a secret ballot were unwilling to put their names against him on the record.

Some of them had made awkward public reversals in the run-up to the vote. On Thursday, Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri was asked whether she would back Jordan in a floor vote. “HELL NO,” she told Scott Wong of NBC News. By Monday morning, she was saying that Jordan had “allayed my concerns about keeping the government open” and securing the southern border; she would vote for him. One by one, other senior Republicans who had initially said that they were determined to block Jordan’s ascent—Representatives Mike Rogers of Alabama, Ken Calvert of California, Vern Buchanan of Florida among them—declared that they, too, had come around.

By this afternoon, however, Jordan was still well short of the votes he needed. “I was surprised at the number. I think everyone was surprised,” Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, a Jordan supporter, told reporters after the vote. The big question now is whether Jordan can close the gap on subsequent ballots, or whether the small cadre of Republican holdouts will grow into a more formidable bloc against his candidacy. The safer assumption seemed to be that Jordan’s opposition would melt away. After all, this group of Republicans is a different breed than the recalcitrant conservatives who forced out McCarthy. The anti-Jordan contingent is, if not ideologically moderate, then far more pragmatic and committed to stable governance than the anti-McCarthy faction.

The lack of a House speaker for the past two weeks has paralyzed the chamber in the middle of ballooning domestic and international crises. The federal government will shut down a month from today if no action is taken by Congress, which has been unable to offer more assistance to either Israel or Ukraine in their respective wars with Hamas and Russia. A number of Jordan skeptics have cited the upheaval outside the Capitol as a rationale for resolving the impasse inside the dome, even if it means voting for a conservative they consider ill-suited to lead.

Lee Drutman: Matt Gaetz is half right

Democrats believed that the election of such a polarizing Republican could, along with the general collapse of governance by the GOP, help them recapture the chamber next year. But they were appalled that Republicans might elevate to the speakership a far-right ideologue many of them have labeled an insurrectionist. A former wrestler who brought a fighter’s mentality to Congress, Jordan rose to prominence as an antagonist of former Republican Speaker John Boehner a decade ago, pushing against bipartisan cooperation. “He is the worst possible choice,” Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, a 25-year veteran of the House, told me before the vote.

Jordan’s record, and the possibility that he would be an electoral vulnerability for the GOP, was clearly weighing on Republicans before the vote. As he walked into the chamber shortly after noon, Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican who represents a swing district on Long Island, told reporters that he still hadn’t decided how to vote. He ultimately joined 19 other GOP lawmakers in backing someone other than Jordan. Other mainstream Republicans justified their vote for Jordan on the grounds that he alone had the credibility to persuade far-right Republicans to avert a government shutdown in the coming weeks and months. “If he says it, they think it’s a strategic move. If I say it, they call me a RINO,” one Republican told me on the condition of anonymity after voting for Jordan.

By the end of the vote, as many Republicans had opposed Jordan as had initially tried to block McCarthy in January, before the former speaker embarked on a five-day period of private lobbying and dealmaking to win the gavel. It was unclear whether Jordan would be able to do the same. He appeared relaxed as he sat through the nearly hour-long roll call, showing little reaction as his defections mounted. When the vote ended, he huddled with supporters, including McCarthy, and the House, having failed once more to elect a speaker, recessed so Republicans could figure out their next move.

Russell Berman

Source link

October 17, 2023
Nothing Is Working for Kevin McCarthy

At this point in the unending search for a House speaker, Donald Trump’s candidacy is making as much progress as Kevin McCarthy’s.

The former president (and half-hearted 2024 White House applicant) today secured his first vote as the House slogged through its seventh fruitless attempt to elect a leader. The semi-serious effort to elevate Trump, put forward by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, came at the expense of McCarthy, the Trump-endorsed Republican leader whose bid hasn’t improved in the past six ballots. McCarthy twice more lost 21 Republicans and fell well short of the 218 votes he needs for a majority.

Today’s votes were notable because they were the first since McCarthy reportedly made an offer to his GOP opponents that seemingly encompassed all of their public demands. The two sides have engaged in intense negotiations over the past day, keeping McCarthy’s candidacy alive and offering perhaps a slim hope that he can win over enough of the holdouts to become speaker. But none of that progress was evident in the tallies this afternoon.

McCarthy’s concessions represented the equivalent of giving away the remaining trinkets in an already ransacked store. He had previously agreed to significantly lower the threshold of members needed to force a vote to remove him as speaker, known as a “motion to vacate.” After setting the minimum at five members, McCarthy gave in to the renegades’ demand that a single member could trigger that vote—restoring the standard conservatives had used in 2015 to push Speaker John Boehner out of office. His allies could argue that with so much opposition to McCarthy already, there was little difference between a threshold of five and one.

David Frum: No tears for Kevin McCarthy

But according to reports, McCarthy went even further. He agreed to give the House Freedom Caucus designated seats on the powerful Rules Committee, a panel traditionally controlled by the speaker that decides whether and under what parameters legislation can come to a vote on the floor. He also reportedly promised to allow members to demand virtually unlimited amendment votes on spending bills; that change could open up a process that in recent years has been centralized by the leadership, but it could also lead to free-for-alls that drag out debates on bills for days or weeks.

The concessions are sure to frustrate McCarthy supporters who believe the wannabe-speaker had already surrendered too much to his opponents. Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri told me that the threshold for the motion to vacate should be a majority of the Republican conference. Lowering it to five, she said, was akin to the speaker having “a knife over your head every day.” Earlier this week, I asked Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a McCarthy supporter who has spoken of partnering with Democrats on a consensus pick for speaker, whether he might desert McCarthy if the GOP leader kept empowering his far-right critics. “It depends on what it is,” Bacon told me. “But I think we went too far as it was already.”

McCarthy was betting that Republicans closest to the political center would stick with him if it meant finally ending a leadership crisis now on its third day. And yet, even this most generous offer to his foes was not enough, and none of the 21 holdouts crossed over to McCarthy’s corner.

McCarthy downplayed today’s first vote before it even began, telling reporters, “Nothing is going to change.” For McCarthy, maintaining the status quo might count as progress. His lingering fear is likely that the bottom will fall out among supporters who are growing tired of the stalemate and are looking to alternatives. Representative Ken Buck of Colorado told CNN that Republicans could nominate McCarthy’s lieutenant, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, by the end of the day if a deal wasn’t struck.

McCarthy’s allies had hoped for another delay to buy time for negotiations, perhaps even through the weekend, but Republicans evidently determined they could not muster the voters to adjourn for a third time in 24 hours. The desire for delay revealed a tactical reversal by McCarthy born out of desperation. At the outset of the voting on Tuesday, his stated goal had been to keep lawmakers on the House floor, casting ballot after ballot until either his far-right opponents or possibly the Democrats got tired enough to let him win. But six consecutive defeats, during which McCarthy lost rather than gained support, disabused him of that idea. Beginning yesterday afternoon, McCarthy tried to adjourn the House to give him more time for backroom negotiations, having apparently realized that his repeated public floggings were doing him no good.

David A. Graham: Kevin McCarthy’s predicament is a warning

Democrats reluctantly agreed to adjourn after the sixth vote yesterday afternoon, but when McCarthy allies sought to close down the House again in the evening, the Democrats fought back. The vote to adjourn became something of a circus. McCarthy’s critics on the right splintered, with four of them voting alongside Democrats to keep the House in session and one arch-conservative, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, switching his vote at the last minute. With the outcome in doubt, both parties began shoving late-arriving members—some still wearing their winter coats—to the front of the chamber to cast their votes before the House clerk, Cheryl Johnson, gaveled the motion closed. When Johnson shouted the final tally over the din of the House—the motion to adjourn passed, 216–214—McCarthy and his allies cheered. McCarthy had won his first vote in his bid for speaker, one that staved off his next public abasement for at least another day.

Earlier yesterday, the House took three more failed speaker votes that were nearly identical to the three failed votes it took on Tuesday. The lone differences were that the anti-McCarthy GOP faction nominated a new candidate, Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, and McCarthy lost 21 Republican votes instead of the 20 defections he had suffered previously. Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana switched her vote from McCarthy to “present,” telling reporters after that the party needed to have more conversations about the way forward. “What we’re doing on the floor is wasting everyone’s time,” she said.

Spartz’s protest made little difference. The House met again for more time-wasting this afternoon, and the best that McCarthy could accomplish was not losing any more votes. His candidacy survived a seventh losing ballot, and the House moved quickly on to an eighth and then a ninth (during which Gaetz abandoned his support for Trump and voted for Representative Kevin Hern of Oklahoma instead).

Those votes proceeded no better and no worse for McCarthy, who now seems to be one or two more defections away from a final defeat. He is hanging on for now, but the deadline for him to strike a deal or exit the race is fast approaching.

Russell Berman

Source link

January 5, 2023
The Humiliation of Kevin McCarthy

Shortly before 4 p.m.yesterday, Kevin McCarthy, the man who desperately wanted to be House speaker, had just suffered two brutally public rejections in a row. For some reason, he was unbowed. “We’re staying until we win,” McCarthy assured a crush of reporters waiting for him outside a bathroom in the Capitol.

Moments earlier, McCarthy had sat and watched as a small but dug-in right-wing faction of his party twice defied his pleas for unity and ensured the 57-year-old Californian’s ignominious place in congressional history. Trying to avoid the first failed speaker vote in 100 years, McCarthy could afford to lose only four Republicans in the crucial party-line tally that opens each new Congress and allows the majority party to govern. McCarthy lost 19. The clerk called the roll again, and once again 19 Republicans voted for someone other than McCarthy. By the hyperpolarized standards of the modern Capitol, this was a rout.

Outside the bathroom, McCarthy explained how the votes would wear down his opposition, how they’d come to see that there was no viable alternative to him. He pointed out that the Republican whom all 19 of his detractors had backed on the second ballot, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, didn’t even want the speaker’s job and was supporting him. “It’ll change eventually,” McCarthy said.

He walked back to the floor and watched as the House rejected him a third time, now with 20 Republicans casting their votes for Jordan. When the chamber adjourned for the day at about 5:30 p.m., McCarthy had already left the floor, his latest bid for speaker thwarted at least momentarily, and perhaps for good.

As the first day of the new congressional term began, McCarthy made a final defiant plea to Republicans inside a private meeting, the culmination of two months’ of negotiating and concessions. The pitch rallied McCarthy’s allies; Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri told me she had never seen him so fiery. But it also “emboldened the other side,” Representative Pete Sessions of Texas told reporters before the votes.

Read: The Republican majority’s opening debacle

Expected or not, the failed votes amounted to a stunning humiliation for McCarthy, who in recent days had been projecting confidence not only in word but in deed. More than measuring the speaker’s drapes, he had begun using them: McCarthy had already moved into the speaker’s suite of offices in the Capitol. If the House elects someone besides him in the coming days or weeks, he’ll have to move right back out.

But yesterday was a broader embarrassment for a Republican Party that, at least in the House, has squandered most of the chances that voters have given it to govern over the past dozen years. A day of putative triumph had turned decidedly sour—a reality that many GOP lawmakers, particularly McCarthy supporters, made little effort to disguise. “This costs us prestige,” Sessions lamented after the House had adjourned. “The world is watching.”

What the world saw probably left many viewers confused. Democrats, the party that voters had relegated to the minority, were giddy and celebratory. “Let the show begin!” one exclaimed after the House formally convened. Representative Ted Lieu of California posed outside his office with a bag of popcorn. During the three rounds of ballots, Democrats flaunted their unity, casting with gusto their unanimous votes for the incoming minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “Jeffries, Jeffries, Jeffries!” now-former Speaker Nancy Pelosi exclaimed in the fourth hour of voting.

By that point, the House chamber had lost most of its energy. Lawmakers who had brought their children to witness their swearing-in as members of Congress had sent most of them away; there would be no swearing-in, because that, too, must wait for the election of a speaker. As the third ballot dragged on, a few Republicans seemed on the verge of nodding off, and others grew chippy. “Because I’m interested in governing: Kevin McCarthy,” Representative Bill Huizenga of Michigan snapped when it was his turn to vote again.

McCarthy’s strategy entering the day had been to keep members on the floor, voting again and again, in hopes that his opponents would grow tired, or buckle under pressure from the House Republicans backing him. But when Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a McCarthy ally, made a motion to adjourn before the fourth vote could be taken, no one put up a fight. “We were at an impasse,” Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, whose defection to Jordan after voting twice for McCarthy might have helped prompt the adjournment, told reporters afterward. “Right now it’s clear Kevin doesn’t have the votes. So what are we going to do? Go down the same road we already saw with [the initial] ballots? It doesn’t make sense.”

After the adjournment, members left for meetings that many hoped would break the stalemate in time for the House to reconvene today at noon. McCarthy was still gunning for the gavel, but his position seemed more precarious than ever. Republicans who had stuck with him for three ballots were openly discussing alternatives. Could Jordan, a fighter even more conservative than McCarthy and closer to Donald Trump, win over GOP moderates? Was Representative Steve Scalise, McCarthy’s deputy, an acceptable alternative? And while some Republicans still proclaimed themselves “Only Kevin,” others suggested that they might be open to someone else. “I’ve learned in leadership roles, never say what you’re never going to do,” Wagner told me before the voting began.

If there was a consensus among Republicans last night, it was that few if any of them had any idea whom they could elect as speaker, or when that would happen. “I think everybody goes in their corner and talks,” Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, a conservative who voted for McCarthy, told reporters. I asked him if there was a scenario in which McCarthy, having lost three votes in a row, could still win. “Oh, absolutely,” he replied. Was that the likeliest scenario? Buck answered just as quickly: “No.”

Russell Berman

Source link

January 4, 2023