US House to try again to pick a Speaker as Jim Jordan scrambles for votes

Rep. Jim Jordan, the hard-line Republican from Ohio, was battling on Wednesday to pick up the votes to become speaker, a day after a bloc of 20 GOP holdouts handed him a defeat that raised questions about his ability to win the gavel.

Jordan called for a second vote around 11 a.m. Wednesday, hoping that he would be able to show he has the momentum on the House floor to win the majority he needs to be elected. A few Republicans who opposed him Tuesday said they would relent and back Jordan on the second ballot.

But other mainstream Republicans vowed to continue opposing Jordan, skeptical of his history as a right-wing rabble-rouser and furious with the way he and his backers refused to line up behind Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the party’s No. 2, who first won the party’s speaker nomination last week only to withdraw because he lacked the hard-liners’ support.

As the infighting rages on, the House remains leaderless with wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, while Congress must act or watch the government shut down in mid-November.

Jordan evinced confidence Wednesday morning, telling reporters outside his office on Capitol Hill that the first vote — in which he drew 200 Republican votes — showed that he had been able to unite most of his party.

“I’ve proven I can get the most conservative members of the conference to the more moderate members of the conference; the whole cross-section,” Jordan said. “It’s important that we get the last few.”

But Jordan’s loss Tuesday underscored the seemingly intractable divisions among Republicans as well as the near-impossible political math that led to the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker two weeks ago and which have so far thwarted the party’s attempts to choose a successor.

Republicans control the House with only four votes to spare, which has allowed a small hard-right minority to flex its muscles repeatedly. The refusal of some mainstream party members to go along with Jordan was an unusual show of force from a group that more commonly seeks compromise and conciliation.

“I will not be pressured or intimidated,” vowed Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, an Appropriations Committee member who voted for Scalise on Tuesday. He added, “I voted for the guy who won the election.”

— Jordan's allies unleashed a pressure campaign over the weekend on lawmakers who refused to back the Ohio Republican or were publicly undecided, in the hopes that a deluge of calls and messages on social media from conservative voters and media personalities would cow them into voting for Jordan. It won him a few votes, but appeared to have mostly backfired, instead infuriating the holdouts. In an effort to assuage them, Jordan wrote on social media on Tuesday night: “We must stop attacking each other and come together. There’s too much at stake.”

— Many of the holdouts represent districts that President Joe Biden won in 2020 who have tried to establish more moderate credentials and are keen to avoid associating themselves with lawmakers as conservative as Jordan. Others are veteran members of the powerful Appropriations Committee, who are deeply distrustful of Jordan’s approach to spending and the types of cuts he has endorsed.

— The chaos in the House has renewed discussions to empower Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina — the temporary speaker whose role is primarily to hold an election for a speaker — to carry out the chamber’s work until the conflict could be resolved. Lawmakers have grown increasingly worried about the impact of operating without an elected speaker, including that Congress might not be able to act to support Israel as it wages war against Hamas.

— Jordan told reporters Wednesday morning that he supported holding a vote to temporarily empower McHenry so the House could function normally while Republicans try to elect a speaker. “People are talking about this resolution,” Jordan said. “I told leadership: ‘Call the question. Let’s find out.’”

— Jordan, the combative co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and a close ally of former President Donald Trump, fell 17 votes short Tuesday. But the fact that 200 Republicans — including many of those more mainstream members — voted to give him the job second in line to the presidency showed how far the GOP has lurched to the right. Jordan, 59, helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election and has used his power in Congress to defend the former president.