Ever since Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as House speaker on 3 October, the Republican conference has been mired in chaos. Friday marked an escalation as should be of that dysfunction as Jim Jordan, the far-right congressman from Ohio, lost his third vote on the House floor to be speaker and his status as the GOP nominee.
Here’s a look at what transpired this week:
How did we get here again?
There are currently 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the US House (there are two vacancies), giving the GOP a very slim majority. That means that any Republican who wants to be speaker has to have the support of nearly all of the Republicans in the House, something that is increasingly harder since individual members need less institutional support than they did in the past because of politically uncompetitive districts and the ability to raise huge sums of money online.
When McCarthy negotiated himself into the speakership earlier this year, one of his key concessions was allowing any House member to file a motion to vacate, or remove him from speaker. Representative Matt Gaetz, a far-right Republican from Florida, filed such a motion earlier this month and enough Republicans – eight in total – voted against McCarthy to oust him.
That vacancy essentially brought the House to a standstill. The speaker runs the business of the House and controls the floor schedule and which bills come to the floor. Without one, the House cannot operate.
After McCarthy’s ouster, Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jordan entered the speaker’s race. Scalise won a private vote among the Republican conference, but withdrew his name from contention after it became clear he could not get enough votes.
What happened with Jim Jordan this week?
Jordan, a far-right Ohio Republican who co-founded the House Freedom Caucus, earned the nomination to be the conference’s next speaker on 13 October. He won the nomination with 124 of the House Republican conference’s 221 votes. In order to become speaker he needed to get 217 votes from all house members.
Things went from bad to worse when Jordan went to the House floor for formal votes on his speakership. On Tuesday, 20 Republicans voted against him, putting him far below the threshold he needed to be speaker. Twenty-two Republicans voted against him in a second vote on Wednesday. Twenty-five Republicans opposed him in a third vote, putting him even further from the speakership.
After the third failed vote, Republicans took a vote by secret ballot on whether Jordan should remain the nominee. He lost that vote handily, losing his status as the Republican nominee for speaker.
New Republican candidates can now declare next week, when Republicans will start the process all over again.
Why did Republicans oppose Jordan?
Several of the members who are opposed to Jordan are members of the House appropriations committee, who are reportedly opposed to the way Jordan has embraced a hard line on spending cuts and shutting down the government.
Members also reported receiving death threats and outside pressure to vote for Jordan, a position that has only hardened their opposition to him. “The last thing you want to do is try to intimidate or pressure me, because then I close out entirely,” Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican who opposes Jordan, told reporters earlier this week.
There is also reportedly bad blood over the way Jordan and his allies treated Steve Scalise. Scalise previously beat Jordan to win the conference’s nomination to be speaker, but withdrew his bid after it became clear he couldn’t get enough votes to win in the House. Some Scalise allies think Jordan didn’t do enough to rally Republicans around Scalise.
“He missed his moment of leadership when he failed Steve Scalise,” John Rutherford, a Florida congressman who voted against Jordan, said earlier this week.
What happens next?
No one knows. Even as it was clear that Jordan had no clear path to becoming the speaker, no Republican emerged to seriously challenge him. Republicans currently have a Sunday noon deadline to announce their candidacy ahead of another round of speakership talks.
Who is Patrick McHenry and what is the speaker pro tempore?
After Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker, Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, became the speaker pro tempore. McCarthy chose McHenry to take on that role should the speakership ever be declared vacant.
There has never been a similar situation, so it’s unclear exactly what the scope of McHenry’s power is. It has been widely understood to be extremely narrow so far, limited to the authority to oversee a vote for the next speaker. As Republicans stalled in picking a new speaker, there has been chatter about temporarily expanding McHenry’s power so that the House can conduct some limited business. The majority of the GOP conference seems opposed to that kind of action.
Could Democrats cut a deal with Republicans on a new speaker?
Democrats have all voted for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, in each of the speakership elections. Jeffries has said there have been “informal talks” with Republicans, but Democrats have been quiet about any negotiations. A pre-condition for any Democratic support for a speaker appears to be that they would allow any bipartisan bills come up for a vote.
