House GOP split ahead of speaker vote as McCarthy tells allies not to nominate him

The House Republican Conference is set to hold its speaker candidate forum on Tuesday, but members remain divided, and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is now discouraging allies from adding him to the mix.

Two lawmakers have emerged as top contenders for the position, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH). Both candidates have spent the past week meeting with different caucuses and delegations, making their case as to why they should be the next speaker.

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Jordan currently leads in public endorsements over Scalise, but there is still a majority of members who have either not publicly endorsed either candidate or say they have not yet made up their minds.

“It’s time that we make a selection and get back to governing,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) said. “Both [Scalise and Jordan], I think, could get us there.”

As it stands, whoever receives a simple majority in the party’s conference meeting on Wednesday will become the GOP nominee. However, that process could be complicated because more than 90 Republicans are trying to change the rules that would require any one candidate to receive 217 votes in the meeting in order to become the conference’s nominee.

While that might prolong the amount of time members are voting behind closed doors, the idea is to avoid a floor fight similar to the 15-round marathon session in January that eventually ended in McCarthy’s speakership.

“I don’t want to go to the floor with 15 rounds,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) said. “I guess [McCarthy] thought it put pressure on those folks to conform, and then all it did was put them into the international spotlight, and they stayed longer. So, I would hope that we can get it all resolved.”

The candidate forum scheduled for Tuesday should help members solidify who they will support. It is expected the proposed rule change will also be brought up in the forum and that members will discuss what that would mean for the conference moving forward.

“I want to remind my colleagues that until we elect a speaker, we’re going to have all the rules we want. We can change every rule that we want. But until we elect the speaker, nothing can happen,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), who has endorsed Scalise.

Going into the candidate forum on Tuesday, neither of the two candidates has the 217 votes that would be necessary to become speaker on the floor under those revised rules.

“The race for speaker of the House has become increasingly more complicated in the last week,” one GOP aide told the Washington Examiner. “Jim Jordan may be the darling of the far right, but he stands no chance courting moderates. As of now, Steve Scalise doesn’t have a clear path to 218.”

Rather, there is a possibility “the next speaker of the House will be somebody whose last name isn’t McCarthy, Jordan, or Scalise,” the aide said.

Another GOP aide said there are “at least 10 members who will never vote for Scalise,” complicating matters even further for the House Republican Conference, which remains torn between whom to elect.

“I think you have two really, really good people,” Diaz-Balart said. “I think we’re in good hands, whoever wins that race.”

Still, Diaz-Balart said he is “hopeful” the conference will coalesce around one candidate and have a nominee by the time the House reconvenes on Wednesday.

“Obviously, it’s a crucial decision for the future of our country,” he said, “and so people feel very strongly, as they should. I’m hopeful that we can do it as soon as possible.”

All this infighting within the Republican Conference is playing out just weeks before the government is set to run out of money on Nov. 17, as well as a call for aid after war broke out in Israel over the weekend. Until there is a speaker, Congress can’t conduct legislative business, leaving lawmakers with a tight deadline to advance their appropriations bills, which some Republicans already predict won’t be possible before the new deadline.

Lawmakers say they expect appropriations to be a topic of conversation during the candidate forum on Tuesday, especially because House Republicans have differing opinions on advancing single-subject spending bills versus passing a stopgap measure. The latter is what angered hard-line conservatives against McCarthy, leading to his ouster.

There is a chance McCarthy could be renominated for speaker by a handful of his allies and centrist members of the conference. But after leaving the door open to a return to the speaker’s gavel on Monday, a GOP source familiar with the matter confirmed McCarthy has since instructed members not to nominate him.

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That latest development comes after several of McCarthy’s holdouts criticized a renomination, arguing the former speaker was fairly removed and would only siphon votes away from Scalise and Jordan.

“Democracy is a messy business,” Burchett said. “It’s been from the start, and it’s not a bunch of people up here and in fake wigs, articulating things with the queen’s English. I think that it’s a dirty business, and they realize it. We followed every rule that was on the books, the rules that Kevin McCarthy supported. So, we follow the rules.”