Republican lawmakers Jim Jordan and Austin Scott launched bids Friday to become speaker of the US House of Representatives as the lower chamber of Congress entered the 10th day of a leadership vacuum that has paralyzed Washington.
With the party reeling from former speaker Kevin McCarthy’s unprecedented removal in a mutiny from the far right, Louisiana’s Steve Scalise was seen as the best hope for a replacement who could heal the bitter divides. But Scalise withdrew on Thursday, just 36 hours after winning his party’s nomination, as it became clear he lacked the 217 votes necessary to prevail in the full House.
Republicans were due to pick a new nominee Friday afternoon with all eyes on Jordan, a darling of the right but a divisive conservative who lost to Scalise in the party’s first internal speaker vote of the week. Scott is more of an unknown quantity, having served as a backbencher since arriving in Washington from Georgia state politics in 2011. He is known as a traditional conservative — angry at government waste and opposed to abortion, gun control, and gay marriage — and a supporter of Donald Trump, the former president, and frontrunning Republican presidential candidate.
“It’s a tough scenario but there are people in there that are honorably trying to get to the right place,” Scott told reporters outside a Republican meeting on Thursday, before he announced his candidacy. “And then there are people in there, as you know, that like to go on the TV and are not necessarily negotiating for anything other than TV time… It makes us look like a bunch of idiots.”
Launching his speakership bid later on social media, Scott posted that he wanted “to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people.” Unlike McCarthy and Scalise, Jordan enjoys the trust of the party’s most conservative fringe as he spent most of his career as an outsider on the right before getting the chairmanship of the powerful Judiciary Committee.
But he is disliked by moderates who remember his role in the downfall of a previous Republican speaker, John Boehner, and in the longest government shutdown in history, in 2018. Trump-backed Jordan won just 99 votes in his defeat to Scalise and would need to find support from another 118 Republicans to win the vote in the full House if he beats Scott to the nomination.
A handful of Jordan’s colleagues have already ruled out backing him, which makes the math look a tall order in a House with a razor-thin Republican majority. “The problem is, I think there’s enough people that would see what has happened and transpired over the last 40 hours to not support him, that we’re going to have the same problem with Jordan that we had with Scalise,” California’s Mike Garcia told reporters. Scalise, McCarthy’s longtime deputy, was seen as too close to the old regime and lacking a unifying message, while some opponents — led by Trump — said he ought to be concentrating on his health after receiving a blood cancer diagnosis.
His withdrawal threw Congress into fresh disarray, with lawmakers unable to address the threat of a government shutdown looming in a month and with war breaking out in Israel, one the closest US allies. With several Democrats and Republicans already out of town, a speaker vote in the full House on Friday looked unlikely, although members could be given 24 hours’ notice to return over the weekend. – Frankie TAGGART
