It’s unclear when the next vote on the House speaker will be after Rep Jim Jordan initially paused his bid for the role but soon backtracked, saying that he was still working on convincing the holdouts.
Mr Jordan said on Thursday afternoon that the members of the House GOP had rejected a temporary solution to empower interim speaker Patrick McHenry until January.
“We made the pitch to members on the resolution as a way to lower the temperature and get back to work. We decided that wasn’t where we’re gonna go. I’m still running for speaker and I plan to go the floor and get the votes and win this race,” he said, according to the Washington Examiner.
According to Punchbowl News, Majority Whip Tom Emmer said: “As I have made very clear over the last few days, we should never allow a Democrat-backed coalition government. Ever. The only coalition we should be looking to build is a Republican coalition uniting all of our conference.”
Republicans coming out of the three-and-a-half-hour conference meeting, which grew emotional at times, said they expected a vote to take place soon but that they wanted to give Mr Jordan more time to speak to the holdouts, CNN reported.
Twenty-two Republicans voted against Mr Jordan on the second ballot – up from 20 on the first. Four members joined the anti-Jordan coalition, while two who voted against him in the first vote went back into the fold to support him.
Some Republicans, led by Rep David Joyce of Ohio, have previously discussed potentially giving Mr McHenry more power so the House could resume deliberation to pass spending bills to avert a government shutdown.
Mr Jordan’s backing of the resolution to empower Mr McHenry prompted an angry reaction from some in the GOP conference. The resolution will likely need at least some backing from across the aisle.
In the two weeks since Mr McCarthy’s defenestration at the hands of GOP hardliners, Mr McHenry has insisted that his power as Speaker Pro Tempore is limited to presiding over the election of a successor to the ousted Californian.
The Tarheel State Republican, an 18-year veteran of the House who has chaired the Financial Services Committee since Republicans assumed control of the House in January, is well-liked on both sides of the aisle and not viewed as openly antagonistic to basic governing tasks.
By contrast, Mr Jordan’s bid for the speaker’s gavel was derailed by concerns among members of his own party that his history of legislative bomb-throwing and lack of accomplishments made him a poor fit for a role that is second in the presidential line of succession.
The proposal to enact a resolution empowering Mr McHenry has support from some moderate Democrats, as well as a few of the Republicans who’ve voted against Mr Jordan in the two votes held so far.
Rep Carlos Gimenez of Florida, an ally of Mr McCarthy who opposed Mr Jordan’s candidacy, told reporters he supports the measure to empower the North Carolinian through year’s end because it will let the House get back to work.
“We can’t get to a speaker. Everything is stopped. We need to get the House moving,” he said.
One Republican who has thus far backed Mr Jordan, Rep Dan Crenshaw of Texas, said he was “definitely open” to the proposal to formalise Mr McHenry’s powers while adding the caveat that he hadn’t yet seen the actual plan.
