Moment Jim Jordan loses second House speaker vote by larger margin than in first round
Rep Jim Jordan held a short press conference on Friday morning, lasting only about ten minutes and taking few questions from reporters.
“Between the first one and the second vote, you all said we’re gonna lose 10, 15 votes,” Mr Jordan told the press. “We picked up a few we lost a few. I think the ones we lost can come back. So look, there’s been multiple rounds of votes for speaker before.”
On the first vote, 20 Republicans voted against Mr Jordan, and 22 did so on the second. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy took 15 rounds of voting before he managed to get across the line in January.
Despite losing two votes and doubts remaining that he will be able to meet the 217 vote threshold needed to take the gavel. The House began meeting at 10am on Friday ahead of a third vote.
The Ohio congressman initially announced he was putting a pause on his speakership bid on Thursday, backing a temporary solution to empower interim speaker Patrick McHenry until January in the hopes the Republican party can get its house in order.
But he backtracked hours later after GOP members rejected that option.
