JORDAN OUT AS HOUSE SPEAKER NOMINEE
Republicans back to square one in search for chamber leader
Republicans cast aside their latest nominee for House speaker on Friday, rejecting Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio during a secret ballot vote, leaving them once again to search for a new leader amid raging personal and political recriminations.
The rejection came hours after Jordan, his support ebbing, failed on a third f loor vote to win the speakership. His defeat left the party with no consensus on a way forward and the chamber paralyzed in the face of growing pressure to get back to business as war raged overseas and a government shutdown grew nearer.
After his colleagues then voted to withdraw Jordan’s nomination, about a dozen House Republicans, few of them household names, quickly began making calls and exploring bids for speaker.
“We need to come together and figure out who our speaker is going to be,” Jordan said, acknowledging his defeat. He said he would turn his focus back to the investigations he is leading into the Biden administration as chair of the Judiciary Committee.
Republicans planned to meet Monday to figure out their next steps and hear from new candidates. But the party ended the week with no signs of having healed any of the deep divisions that have left it essentially dysfunctional.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said Jordan was “knifed by secret ballot, anonymously, in a closed-door meeting in the bowels of the Capitol.”
He added, “This was truly swamp tactics on display.”
A favorite of former President Donald Trump, Jordan’s rise and fall capped an extraordinary 18 days of pa
ralysis and chaos in the House, after hard-right rebels loyal to Jordan — and led by Gaetz — deposed Speaker Kevin McCarthy and then a wider group blocked Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican.
“Unfortunately, Jim is no longer going to be the nominee,” McCarthy said. “We will have to go back to the drawing board.
“I’m concerned about where we go from here,” he added.
In an unusual twist, it was a group of 25 mainstream Republicans who stood in opposition to Jordan’s speaker bid on Friday, showing that they could operate as a bloc to influence the course of a party that has moved increasingly rightward and takes its cues from Trump and his followers.
There is no consensus among Republicans about an alternative to Jordan. Republicans have already shown resistance to a temporary solution that would give Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who is acting as speaker pro tempore, the authority to run the House for a few months.
Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the Republican whip, began making calls about his bid for speaker, according to a person familiar with his activities. A spokesperson for McCarthy said Emmer had the backing of the former speaker.
Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, the chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan and Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia also announced their candidacies.
“We just had two speaker-designates go down,” Hern said. “We must unify and do it fast.”
Scott had run previously against Jordan, but fell short.
“If we are going to be the majority we need to act like the majority, and that means we have to do the right things the right way,” Scott wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “I supported and voted for Rep. Jim Jordan to be the Speaker of the House. Now that he has withdrawn I am running again to be the Speaker of the House.”
Republicans immediately began suggesting other possibilities as well, including McHenry, McCarthy and Scalise. Other names included Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the Rules Committee chair, and Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, the Budget Committee chair, who said he was considering a run.
Exasperated with no easy solutions in sight, Rep. Mark Alford, a freshman from Missouri, was far from alone in expressing his anger and disappointment.
“I gave up my career to come here to do something for America, to rebuild our military, to get spending under control, to secure our border — and here we are in this quicksand,” he said.
The unending discord among the chamber’s Republicans only appeared more consequential as President Joe Biden asked Congress to take up a $105 billion package that would provide security assistance to Ukraine and Israel in the midst of wars there while also giving more money to Taiwan and an infusion of funds to help deter migration across the border with Mexico.
Jordan, a co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, began Friday by pushing ahead with the vote despite clear signs that he would fall short. The outcome showed that he had actually lost ground, with 25 Republicans opposing him, compared with the 22 who voted against him on his last try Wednesday. Needing 215 votes to win, he received 194.
Three Republicans from swing districts won by Biden in 2020 — Reps. Marc Molinaro of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Thomas Kean of New Jersey — abandoned Jordan after supporting him earlier.
In a secret ballot after the floor vote, the opposition to Jordan grew, and 112 Republicans voted to reject him as their party’s candidates for speaker.
Many of those opposed to Jordan were angry at the way some of his allies treated McCarthy and Scalise. Backers of Jordan failed to rally around Scalise for speaker after he drew support from a majority of Republicans in a conference vote.
Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee said Friday that it was “absurd” that Republicans were going home for the weekend instead of restarting the process immediately. He added that a majority of the members in the conference shouted “No!” when the schedule was announced.
“We’re not done, and we shouldn’t be leaving,” he said.
Republicans predict the House could essentially stay closed until the mid-November deadline for Congress to approve funding or risk a federal government shutdown.
Democrats nominated Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for the speakership, with Rep. Katherine Clark calling Jordan, who refused to certify the 2020 presidential election results, “a threat to democracy.”
At a fundraiser Friday night, Biden offered his own commentary on Jordan’s failure: “He just got his rear end kicked.”
Jeffries reiterated that his party was “ready, willing and able” to work with more traditional Republicans on a path to reopen the House — particularly as Congress is being asked to consider Biden’s emergency aid package.