The House GOP’s arduous path to a new speaker

Two weeks before Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted from the speakership, he had a conversation with Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC).

He informed the North Carolina Republican that he was the person on his secret list set to become speaker pro tempore, a practice begun in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to ensure continuity of government, if a motion to vacate was successful. At that time, it wasn’t clear if one would even be attempted.

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Nonetheless, McHenry started doing light research about what exactly his powers would be if he were to become speaker pro tempore, and then, as it became more clear that the motion to vacate was something that was going to happen, he started doing more intensive research about how he would serve in that role.

Then it happened. On a Tuesday afternoon in the Capitol, eight Republicans, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), voted with all the Democrats to remove McCarthy. The House was speakerless.

McHenry walked down the aisle and assumed his position as the presiding officer. He was now speaker pro tempore.

“The chair declares the House in recess, subject to the call of the chair,” McHenry said as he slammed the gavel in a now-viral moment.

As he brought down the gavel, McHenry said he felt “pure anger.” And it was at that moment that the House would be thrashed into a three-week period of chaos. There would be no speaker, no legislation could be considered, no aid to Ukraine or Israel could be passed, and a whole branch of government would be almost entirely stalled because of the headless House.

The Washington Examiner talked to over 15 members, along with many of their aides, for this story.

They painted a picture of a conference divided almost to the breaking point, unable to agree about basic things, much less who should follow the vice president in the line of presidential succession.

After he was booted, McCarthy called a leadership meeting and informed everyone at the table that he would not be running for speaker again. He would step aside to let others try to take over. Many lawmakers present tried to convince him to stay. But his mind was made up.

And the race to succeed him was on.

Scalise strikes first
The obvious successor to McCarthy was House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who was the second-ranking Republican in the House and had the political operation already built up that would be needed to run the race. But also mulling a bid was House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), a household name and an icon in conservative politics and loved by the grassroots, but he didn’t have leadership experience or the political operation that Scalise had.

After the conference meeting, members started to approach Scalise, asking him to run. Throughout that night, the Louisiana Republican was making and fielding calls from members who were talking through the process and what it would look like for him if he were to get in.

A main concern of his was his health. He had recently been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a treatable form of blood cancer. And while he had been going through treatment, it was still a real concern for him whether he should do it while also undergoing treatment. After talking to his family, he decided he would run.

Jordan, for his part, was also encouraged by members, aides, and those in grassroots groups to run as soon as McCarthy’s fate was sealed.

The Ohio Republican was deep in the throes of investigating what he described as the weaponization of government and helping lead the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, and he was not particularly interested in the job of speaker.

“I like the job I had,” he would say in interviews amid his eventual run.

Jordan, who built a national reputation as a tenacious oversight bulldog, was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, and his relationship with House leaders was once rocky.

But he had, in time, become an important ally to leadership, and after praying about his next steps and speaking to his family, he decided he would run as well.

Jordan and Scalise met on Wednesday morning after McCarthy had said he would not run for the gavel again. Neither candidate had announced he was running, but both were known to be interested in and making calls about the position.

The two soon-to-be candidates informed one another they would both be running for speaker.

Jordan was the first to announce he was running for speaker, saying he believed he was uniquely positioned to unite the difficult hard-liners in the conference with those from other factions.

Jordan has more ties to conservative media than nearly anyone else in Congress. He had Fox News’s Sean Hannity, one of the most influential voices in the GOP, on his side. McCarthy’s tenuous relationship with Scalise meant Jordan had the speaker emeritus also backing him. Grassroots groups from the Tea Party Patriots to the Conservative Partnership Institute pushed for Jordan’s ascension to speaker.

But Scalise had a team and staff for this sort of race. He had already run numerous leadership races and had the people necessary to run the race. He had staff dedicated to member services whip operations and had built up goodwill from a number of members over the years.

Jordan, on the other hand, did not. What he did have, however, was veteran McCarthy allies lending whip advice and the loyal support of hard-line members, which would play a big role.

As the two members started making their pitches to colleagues about why they should be speaker, there was another fight going on.

Over 90 Republicans, led by Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), were making the push to amend the conference rules and require that any speaker candidate must receive 217 votes in a closed-door meeting of GOP lawmakers before becoming the nominee.

“This is about how we elect the speaker candidate specifically for this election since this is unprecedented,” Fitzpatrick said at the time. “We believe that people, you know, whoever the candidate is, they should emerge with 217 from conference so that there is one vote on the House floor. We don’t want to repeat of what happened last week or in January.”

Jordan’s supporters and team were all for this rule. But Scalise’s team opposed the rule and actively whipped against it.

Then, the day came for the Republican conference to vote on who would be their nominee.

Before the speaker vote, the conference voted on the Roy amendment. If the amendment failed or was tabled, then it was a good sign Scalise would get the nomination. But if it passed, lawmakers believed, then Jordan had the upper hand.

The amendment was brought up in the room, and Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), a Scalise ally, made a motion to table it. Republicans voted to keep the simple majority requirement in place. So, voting on the candidates began.

While Jordan had the most public endorsements, Scalise was the favorite to win the nomination. And he did.

The vote was 113–99, far short of the 217 votes required to become speaker on the floor but enough to become the first post-McCarthy speaker-designate. But he would not be the last.

As the celebration began among those in Scalise’s camp, some members who had supported Jordan came out of the room and immediately indicated they would not vote for the Louisiana Republican on the House floor.

Jordan’s concession speech in the room didn’t help either. While he did say he would support Scalise, allies of the majority leader didn’t feel like Jordan did enough to get his supporters to rally around Scalise.

“I will continue to vote for Jim Jordan,” freshman Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) said at the time as he left the room. “I never said [Scalise] is the wrong leader. I just think right now we need to reevaluate all leadership.”

Then, one by one, more members started to come out in opposition to Scalise. This came as a surprise to Scalise and those close to him as during his calls throughout the week people had told him they were voting for Jordan in the room but would support him on the floor if he were to get the nomination.

Instead of going immediately to the floor, as many members and aides believed he should have done, Scalise decided to meet with holdouts to try to allay their concerns.

But first, he met with Jordan.

During the meeting, Jordan offered to give Scalise’s nominating speech, endorse him, and whip for him — but on one condition: that Scalise reciprocate if his speakership bid failed.

After the meeting, Scalise spent the rest of the day and into the following meeting with the holdouts, hearing them out and trying to learn why they were against him. Through those meetings, it became clear that there were at least 20 people who were not going to budge and would oppose him regardless.

On the evening of Oct. 12, in a closed-door conference meeting, Scalise dropped out of the race. Bringing the conference back to square one.

Jordan’s second chance
While Jordan didn’t announce right away, it was clear he was going to step up and run again.

“I think today we got to focus on a great American like Steve Scalise. Any type of announcement about what may or may not happen, I think, is best done tomorrow,” Jordan said immediately following Scalise’s announcement. “Look, when I decided to run before, I waited until the next day after Kevin made his decision. I thought that was appropriate. I will do the same thing right now. I’ll wait.”

When Jordan made his bid for speaker, he drew one relatively obscure opponent in Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA).

Multiple aides and members viewed Scott as someone who was solely put up so members would have another option to take votes away from Jordan. While Jordan was still expected to get the nomination, it was unclear by how much.

The answer was not enough. Scott received 81 votes, and Jordan received 124, an unconvincing number and far short of the 217 votes necessary to be speaker. House Republicans then held a private ballot asking, “Will you support Jordan on the floor?”

Only 152 Republicans said yes and 55 said no, another bad sign for Jordan.

After sending members home and working all weekend to get their support, Jordan seemed to be making progress when they returned on Monday. Several members who had publicly opposed him said they would now be voting for him. But coming out of a conference meeting later that night, it became clear he still didn’t have the votes.

Jordan took it to the floor anyway.

On the first ballot, he lost 20 Republican votes and failed to become speaker. He decided to go back to the drawing board and meet with the members who were opposing him. But those members had a plan.

There were more than 20 holdouts on Jordan, but as a way to make it look like his opposition was growing, some of them decided that they would vote for Jordan on the first ballot, then vote against him on the second, and continue that pattern for as long as Jordan kept bringing votes to the floor.

On the second ballot, this came true as 22 Republicans voted against him, four people flipped from supporting him to opposing him, and two flipped the other way.

The morning after the second ballot, Jordan held a conference meeting and announced he would not go to the floor for a third ballot and instead endorse passing a resolution to expand the powers of McHenry, the temporary speaker, through January to give the House the ability to pass legislation.

The announcement was met with immediate opposition. Some members wanted Jordan to stay in and fight. Others argued McHenry already had all the powers he needed to bring legislation to the floor.

So, this plan was abandoned, and Jordan held a third ballot.

While this was going on, Jordan’s detractors, many of whom were rank-and-file members who were not used to being in the public eye, began receiving threatening and intimidating messages, only hardening their opposition.

While Jordan vehemently condemned these actions, his allies’ responses were sometimes more muted.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, called the threats a “red herring” and compared them to lobbying.

“They didn’t seem to mind. No one in this town seemed to mind the pressure campaign from all the lobbyists and the special interest in Washington, D.C., in January,” Perry said before the third ballot. “But suddenly now they mind all the calls and the emails and the texts and the letters and the visits from their own constituents.”

With opposition growing, Jordan moved to a third ballot, where he bled even more support, losing 25 Republican votes. Almost immediately, Jordan called another conference meeting to hold a vote on whether he should remain the nominee for speaker, where 112 Republicans voted against keeping him the nominee and the conference moved on.

Jordan’s decision to have the conference vote on a secret ballot rather than withdraw from the race once it became clear certain members would not budge on supporting him aligned with his brand as a competitor. To Jordan, it was a classier exit, being voted out and forced out through conference rather than quitting.

This opened the floodgates to a slew of other candidates running for speaker. Nine members initially filed to run.

Johnson after the flood
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) was the next nominee after five ballots. But just four hours later, he withdrew. Former President Donald Trump came out against Emmer, as did some conservatives concerned with the Minnesotan’s past votes.

Then exhaustion really started to kick in. Members had been at the Capitol for upward of 13 hours already, and they still didn’t have a speaker after three weeks of trying and failing.

Enter House Republican Conference Vice Chairman Mike Johnson (R-LA). He emerged as an unlikely front-runner while his opponents struggled to keep up with “other,” a category that included McCarthy — who wasn’t even running.

Johnson finally got the nomination on the third ballot, receiving 128 votes, the most of any of the previous nominees to replace McCarthy. Johnson then immediately went to an open roll-call vote, where only three members voted present and the rest said they would support him on the floor. The final sticking point was the 23 members who weren’t there. Johnson spent the rest of the night calling them to secure their support.

The previous nominees had much more experience, bigger staffs, and national profiles. Johnson, only in his fourth term, had none of those things. It turned out to be exactly what his conference needed.

House Republicans viewed Johnson as a workhorse and as somebody who could unite the conference. When he received the nomination, most members crowded around him in the Ways and Means Committee room to celebrate their new speaker-designate.

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Johnson didn’t have the “designate” modifier for long. In the end, not a single Republican opposed him on the House floor. “I notice a little more of a smile on your face today more than we have in the past,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) joked to McHenry before the vote on Johnson. Soon, most House Republicans were smiling.

“We went through a lot to get here, but we are ready to govern, and that will begin right away,” Johnson said.

Reese Gorman is a congressional reporter and Ashley Oliver a Justice Department reporter at the Washington Examiner.