House gridlock over Speaker now longest since civil war

THE Republican impasse over choosing a House speaker has now dragged on longer than balloting for the post in any other US Congress since before the Civil War.

Kevin Mccarthy’s failure to win a majority vote a ninth time means the election will stretch beyond the number of ballots it took Republican Frederick Gillett to secure the position in 1923, a contest with eerie parallels to the current conflict.

The 1923 Congress was the first since 1859 to take more than one ballot to choose a speaker. Thirteen of the 14 multiple-ballot speaker elections occurred before the Civil War, when party divisions were muddled by regional passions over slavery. In 1855, it took 133 ballots to choose a speaker, and in 1859 it took 44 ballots.

Gillett, a Massachusetts Republican who had been speaker the two prior Congresses, in 1923 faced a revolt comprised of 20 dissidents, the same number of those who are battling Mccarthy. And opponents of both men were demanding rule changes to empower a minority within the party, according to a blog post by Jeffery Jenkins, a University of Southern California public policy professor who co-authored a book on the history of House Speakers.

Gillett originally had risen to be Speaker in 1919 in part because he was expected to be passive, with one reporter describing him as someone who didn’t drink coffee in the morning “for fear it would keep him awake all day. ”behind the scenes, conservative Republican leaders tightly controlled the House.

Then in 1923, a group of 20 Republican progressives opposed Gillett’s election while calling for changes to give them more power within the House.

Gillett at first refused but then capitulated on the third day of the deadlock. With the demands met, 18 of the 20 progressives cast their ballots for Gillett.

Gillett, a 32-year veteran of the House, left at the end of the term after mounting a successful run for the Senate.

The next speaker, Nicholas Longworth, bolstered by an enlarged Republican majority, then exacted revenge on the dissidents, stripping them of their committee assignments and seniority.