The House of Representatives again failed to elect a new speaker on Wednesday, after the hard-right congressman Jim Jordan failed to win the gavel in the second round of voting.
The second vote tally showed 199 Republicans supporting Jordan and all 212 Democrats supporting their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Twenty-two Republicans opposed Jordan on Wednesday, leaving him far short of the 217 votes needed to ascend to the speakership. Because of Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House, Jordan can only afford four defections within his party and still become speaker.
In a worrisome sign for Jordan’s prospects, four Republicans who had supported him a day earlier flipped against him on Wednesday. Only two Republicans who initially voted against Jordan, Doug LaMalfa of California and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, switched to supporting him, giving Jordan a net loss of two votes on the second ballot.
The result intensified questions over whether Jordan, a congressman from Ohio, has any path to the speakership given the rising opposition among more moderate members of the Republican conference. A couple hours after the second vote failed, Jordan informed reporters that the House would not vote again on Wednesday evening. Asked whether he planned to hold a third round of voting on Thursday, Jordan said he hoped to do so and would confer with the acting speaker, Republican Patrick McHenry of North Carolina.
The House has been without a speaker since the historic ouster of the Republican Kevin McCarthy earlier this month. As long as the chair is vacant, the House is immobilized, unable to advance any legislation.
Many Republicans have expressed their desire to quickly pass an aid package for Israel amid its war with Hamas, but the House cannot do so until a new leader is elected.
In his nomination speech for Jordan on Wednesday, Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chair of the House rules committee, said the ouster of McCarthy had “put the Congress in a state of chaos and the country into a state of uncertainty”.
“We have a chance today to end that chaos and to end that uncertainty,” Cole said.
But those words failed to convince enough of Jordan’s skeptics to end the standstill, which has now stretched on for more than two weeks. In an attempt to rally the troops, Jordan called on Republicans to unify, a somewhat ironic request given that Jordan made a name for himself in Congress by clashing with House leadership.
“We must stop attacking each other and come together. There’s too much at stake,” Jordan said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Let’s get back to working on the crisis at the southern border, inflation, and helping Israel.”
Jordan’s detractors appeared confident after the first ballot, correctly predicting their ranks would grow in the second round of voting. One of the holdouts, Mario Díaz-Balart of Florida, said on Wednesday morning that Jordan “will not be able to get the Republican votes to become speaker”, adding, “I think all of us have to get together and figure out what’s the next step.”
Some of Jordan’s Republican critics reported receiving harassing phone calls attempting to pressure them to support Jordan, but those lawmakers made clear that they would not be intimidated into changing their votes.
“This was a vote of conscience and I stayed true to my principles,” Congresswoman Kay Granger of Texas, one of the holdouts, said on Twitter. “Intimidation and threats will not change my position.”
Because of the entrenched Republican opposition, Jeffries once again won more votes than Jordan on the second ballot. In his nominating speech for Jeffries on Wednesday, the House Democratic caucus chair, Pete Aguilar of California, boasted about Democrats’ unity and reiterated his call to moderate Republicans to join them in forming a bipartisan coalition.
“The people’s House has spoken and Leader Jeffries has the support to be [the] speaker that this country needs,” Aguilar said. “No amount of election denying is going to take away from those vote totals.”
On Tuesday, Jeffries indicated that some Republicans were prepared to work across the aisle to resolve the standoff, saying that there have been “informal conversations that have accelerated over the last few days”.
“My hope, now that it’s clear Jim Jordan lacks the votes to be speaker, [is] that those conversations will accelerate this evening,” Jeffries told reporters.
One idea floated by centrist Democrats would involve temporarily expanding the powers of the acting speaker, McHenry, to allow the House to take up urgent legislation. In addition to the proposed aid package for Israel, the House must approve some kind of stopgap funding measure by 17 November to avoid a government shutdown. The idea of expanding McHenry’s capabilities as speaker pro tempore appeared to be gaining traction among moderate Republicans after the second failed vote on Wednesday.
Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, a Republican who has now voted against Jordan twice, said in a statement: “It’s time to empower the speaker pro tempore. The Republican conference is still deeply divided. While we continue working on finding a consensus candidate for speaker that will prevent this dysfunction from continuing, we must resume the business of governing. Let’s get back to work.”
