After Republican Kevin McCarthy was ousted last week, the position of House speaker remains open. As the House prepares to choose a new speaker in the coming days, here are the main players to know about.
The candidates
Jim Jordan: A congressman from Ohio, he is a fierce Trump loyalist and founder member of the Freedom Caucus. Having already secured the former president’s endorsement, the combative Jordan – chairman of the powerful House judiciary committee – has emerged as a frontrunner in the race to win the speaker’s gavel.
His elevation to the speakership would be particularly poignant – and for Democrats, provocative – given his perceived close involvement with the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, leading to the deadly January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol building by a pro-Trump mob. Jordan, 59, refused to cooperate with a congressional committee investigating the attack, even ignoring a house subpoena to appear.
Days after the Capitol raid, Trump awarded Jordan the presidential medal of freedom.
A former assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, he has been accused of turning a blind eye to allegations of sexual abuse made against a doctor, now deceased, who was part of the wrestling team’s backroom staff. Jordan has denied being aware of the abuse allegations.
Steve Scalise: Now the No 2 ranking Republican in the house, the 57-year-old Louisiana congressman is seen by many as the ideal unifying candidate.
A former chief whip, he has the merits of an inspiring personal backstory. He overcame serious gunshot wounds suffered in a 2017 shooting, when a gunman angered by Trump’s 2016 election opened fire on a Republican congressional baseball team practice. More recently, he has undergone chemotherapy for a rare type of blood cancer, prompting him to wear a mask in public settings, despite being against Covid mask-wearing mandates. He has insisted that he has recovered better than doctors forecast and that he is fit to withstand the pressure of the speaker’s role.
A noted conservative and ally of the fossil fuel industry, he was overshadowed by controversy after it was revealed that in 2002 he spoke at a meeting of a white nationalist group founded by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Scalise later called the speech “a mistake, which I regret”. Separately, he was quoted as referring to himself as “David Duke without the baggage”.
Others to know
Patrick McHenry: The bow-tie-wearing congressman from North Carolina is not regarded as a candidate to replace McCarthy, but he became interim speaker after his ousting and is in charge of the process to find a successor. McHenry, 47, has not attempted to assume the full legislative powers of the speaker temporarily and, in fact, put the house into recess for the duration of the succession procedure. He supported the stop-gap deal engineered by McCarthy with Democrats last week to keep the government running.
