Representative Kevin McCarthy’s chances of becoming House speaker remained in doubt hours before Republicans formally take control of the chamber.
(Bloomberg) — Representative Kevin McCarthy’s chances of becoming House speaker remained in doubt hours before Republicans formally take control of the chamber.
With Republicans holding only a slender majority when the new Congress convenes on Tuesday, McCarthy can’t lose more than four GOP votes in his bid for speaker, and at least 14 Republicans as of Monday still hadn’t promised their support. Some of his most ardent opponents, including Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Bob Good of Virginia, have indicated there’s nothing McCarthy can do to get their votes.
The turmoil has overshadowed the House Republicans’ electoral triumph in the midterm elections and is more evidence of the internal party struggle over the direction of the GOP between swing-district moderates and hard-line conservatives who have adopted the populist agenda of former President Donald Trump.
McCarthy’s troubles are likely to be further complicated by the political sideshow involving newly-elected Representative George Santos, the New York Republican who has admitted he made up much of his resume, including that he graduated from college and worked for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup.
Santos’s fabrications became public after he was elected and federal and local officials have since opened investigations into the discrepancies. One unanswered question is if Santos violated campaign finance laws. McCarthy has so far been silent about whether he plans to discipline Santos, despite other Republicans calling for action against him. McCarthy can’t afford to lose Santos’s vote with so many other members in doubt.
McCarthy, 57, who has been backed by Trump, sought to win over some of his detractors by making several concessions in a slate of proposed administrative House rules made public over the weekend. Those included making it easier for a small group of lawmakers to call for the speaker’s ouster and a proposal for more ideological diversity on committees. However nine GOP members sent a letter in response, saying that the California Republican’s plan didn’t go far enough.
House Republicans are set to huddle privately Tuesday morning, preceding the afternoon’s floor vote for speaker.
Multiple Ballots
Several lawmakers who participated in a tense House GOP conference call over the weekend predicted the speaker’s voting would take multiple rounds of votes to finally elect a leader. That would be both a historical rarity as well as a personal humiliation for McCarthy that could doom his bid. A multi-ballot speaker vote hasn’t occurred since 1923, when it took nine ballots for Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts to be elected.
“I’m disappointed in these so-called hard-liners,” Representative Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania said in an interview Monday. He described the potential showdown as a self-inflicted GOP wound before its incoming majority even takes power. “If their aim is to embarrass Kevin, well, they’ve already embarrassed the entire Republican conference.”
However, members who left a meeting with McCarthy Monday afternoon were optimistic he would pull out a victory.
“It’s a question of when, not if,” said Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, the co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, after leaving the meeting.
The speaker’s vote will occur after the members arrive on the House floor at noon and before they are sworn-in for the new Congress. In all, 434 members are expected to vote Tuesday, 222 Republicans and 212 Democrats. One seat is vacant after the death of Representative Donald McEachin, a Virginia Democrat, in late November.
The speaker voting will be held by public roll-call and a simple majority of more than 50% of all votes cast from both parties is required to win.
If Democrats remained unified in opposing McCarthy, as expected, and all 434 members take part in the voting, it would take only five Republicans to throw the election into additional rounds of votes. Even if McCarthy eventually prevails, he would be politically weakened and face a difficult task in moving ahead with his agenda.
In a Sunday afternoon call with rank-and-file Republicans, McCarthy didn’t claim that he had stowed away enough votes, Reschenthaler said, adding that many issues were left unresolved.
“Eventually, Kevin is going to win,” said Representative Gus Bilirakis of Florida, a McCarthy backer. But like Reschenthaler, Bilirakis said the McCarthy detractors could push the voting to successive ballots.
Other Options
It’s unclear who would have support among enough Republicans to beat McCarthy in a multi-ballot deadlock. No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise has been discussed privately by some members as a potential fall-back.
The lawmakers aren’t limited to voting for House members.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, some of whom signed the nine-person statement criticizing McCarthy’s rules proposal, have been some of the most reticent to support McCarthy.
There was no immediate response Monday from the Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania on whether the group intended to continue its hold out of McCarthy support to the point of blocking him Tuesday.
Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who has also offered his name up for speaker, “will vote for himself,” Matthew Tragesser, his spokesman said in an email Monday.
“Kevin McCarthy is still well short of the 218 votes needed to become the next House speaker,” Tragesser said.
In recent years, both Democrat Nancy Pelosi and Republican John Boehner have entered the floor voting for speaker with rank-and-file party colleagues threatening to oppose them. Both managed to emerge victorious on the first ballot.
For McCarthy, who abandoned a previous speaker’s bid because of conservative opposition, there are indications that his GOP detractors are more interested in denying him the gavel than actually enhancing their own power with rules changes, said Josh Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s governmental affairs institute.
Huder predicted Republicans wouldn’t coalesce around another candidate in a deadlock unless or until McCarthy drops out.
“If these conservatives are adamant, McCarthy needs to be rejected before they can move to a full conference negotiations on a compromise candidate,” Huder said.
Tight Margins
The tight margins McCarthy faces foreshadow a challenge that will dog Republicans for the next two years. The new rules proposal would also eliminate the ability for House members to vote by proxy, an option that was introduced during the pandemic. This means that Republicans will need to keep close track of all of their members because a couple of absences could mean they don’t have enough “yes” votes to pass legislation.
Delaying consideration of legislation because of members being gone from the Capitol for illness, medical procedures or family emergencies is a problem that Senate Democrats repeatedly faced last Congress when they needed all 50 of their members present for every vote.
–With assistance from Emily Wilkins.
(Adds quotes of support from 10th paragraph. A previous version corrected timing of vote.)
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