Republicans drop Jim Jordan as their House speaker nominee

Table Of Content

• Jordan chats with supporters as House session begins
• COMMITTEE INFORMATION
• GOP members who bucked McCarthy call on colleagues to back Jordan
• Republicans pick Jim Jordan as nominee for House speaker, putting job within the Trump ally's reach
• Republicans nominate Jim Jordan for House speaker, putting job within the Trump ally’s reach
• Simpson votes Scalise again

Jordan's efforts to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump is a key concern of one of the most vocal opponents to his speaker bid, Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado. During his press conference, Jordan was asked about communications he had with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about ways Mike Pence could, as vice president, stop the certification of the election results. The freshman New York Republican told NBC News that he supported Jordan previously because he "felt he could unify the conference." With Jordan out of the speaker's race, Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told NBC News after the closed-door House GOP Conference that he plans to run for speaker. He concluded by arguing that his military experience made him "uniquely qualified" to determine the truth on the ground. He said he wanted to "bring that information back to Congress where I can hopefully increase the sense of urgency for my colleagues of both parties to put aside their petty personal and significant political differences and act in the best interest of America and our beleaguered allies."

Jordan chats with supporters as House session begins

"I feel confident I can win the votes where others could not. I have no special interests to serve; I’m only in this to do what’s best for our Nation and to steady the ship for the 118th Congress," Bergman said in a statement. Jordan also received an important nod Friday from the Republican Party’s campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who made an attempt to unify the fighting factions. But Jordan’s allies swung into high gear at a chance for the hard-right leader to seize the gavel. In announcing his decision to withdraw from the nomination, Scalise declined to throw his support behind Jordan as the bitter rivalry deepened. “It’s got to be people that aren’t doing it for themselves,” he said late Thursday. “If we’re going to be the majority party, we have to act like the majority party,” said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a former president of the “tea party” freshmen class of 2011 who posed a last-ditch challenge to Jordan.

COMMITTEE INFORMATION

Jordan is "no longer" the speaker designee within the House Republican Conference, multiple members told NBC News. More than half a dozen Republican men have launched or are considering a speaker bid, but no women. Scalise has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer and is being treated, but he has also said he was definitely up for the speaker’s job. Weeks of heated, fiery meetings later, Republicans have drifted far off track from what had been their House majority’s stated priorities of cutting spending and other goals. Angry that Scalise didn’t seem to get fair treatment, more mainstream Republicans staged their own revolt against hard-liner Jordan, saying he didn’t deserve the gavel.

GOP members who bucked McCarthy call on colleagues to back Jordan

The stalemate, now in its second week, has thrown the House into chaos, grinding all other business to a halt. Jordan, of Ohio, will now try to unite colleagues from the deeply divided House GOP majority around his bid ahead of a floor vote, which could push to next week. "We need to do what we told them we were going to do when they elected us and put us in office, and frankly we can’t do that if the House isn’t open," he told reporters. So far, six Republican have voted for someone other than Jordan, putting him a path to failing a third time. Members could still change their votes before the voting is concluded.

Democrats now outnumber Republicans here, though turnout still tends to favor the GOP. (We had 18 until this year; after the 2020 Census count found that the state population had shrunk, the L.A. area lost one representative.) You can double check your district and your representative here. The House has a total of 435 representatives, each of whom represents a district. District lines are drawn so that each represents roughly the same number of people — 700,000 on average.

House reaches Day 10 without a speaker as Republicans nominate Jim Jordan - NBC News

House reaches Day 10 without a speaker as Republicans nominate Jim Jordan.

Posted: Fri, 13 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is backing Emmer for speaker. McCarthy did not publicly endorse a candidate when Rep. Jim Jordan and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise vied for the nomination. “If you guys try to do that, you’ll figure out who the next person on Kevin’s list is,” McHenry told the room, three sources said, referring to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s secret list of GOP lawmakers who would serve as temporary speaker in the event of a vacancy. The Ohio Republican said at a news conference that Republicans need to consider why voters sent them to Congress.

Simpson votes Scalise again

Just as handfuls of Republicans announced they wouldn’t go for Scalise, the situation flipped Friday and holdouts were sticking with Scalise, McCarthy or someone other than Jordan. “We’re trying to figure out if there’s a way we can get back with a Republican-only solution,” said veteran legislator Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.

A founder of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Jordan’s run essentially collapsed in large part because more centrist Republicans are revolting over the nominee they view as too extreme and the hardball tactics being used to win their votes. They have been bombarded with harassing phone calls and even reported death threats . The outcome left Republicans dejected, frustrated and sinking deeper into turmoil, another week without a House speaker bordering on a full-blown crisis. House Republicans have no realistic or working plan to unite the fractured GOP majority, elect a new speaker and return to the work of Congress that has been languishing since hard-liners ousted Kevin McCarthy at the start of the month. So Jordan then made the choice to go for a second ballot, and that was basically a referendum asking his colleagues if they would vote for him on the floor. So Jordan wanted to be able to go to the floor fast, as fast as Friday to lock it up, but those numbers were just so far away from the 217 he'll likely need on the floor.

It still has no speaker, which means it can't vote on any legislation, including any additional military aid to Israel. Majority Leader Steve Scalise was briefly the party speaker designate this week, until he realized he didn't have enough support to win a floor vote and withdrew. Now the party has tapped Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, but he doesn't seem to have enough votes either.

We’ve listed each candidate’s title, party affiliation, campaign website, and campaign finance where information was available. For sitting members of Congress, we’ve also included links to their voting records. The top two candidates in each district, regardless of party, will compete in the runoff election in November. In Southern California, a handful of districts have become competitive. Orange County has historically elected primarily Republican representatives, but four districts flipped to elect Democrats during the 2018 elections.

Top Republicans continue to express no interest in seeking help from Democrats to resolve their internal party problems. It is unclear whether Jordan will fall to the same fate as Scalise, as winning the nomination is far different from winning on the House floor. “We need to come together and figure out who our speaker is going to be,” Mr. Jordan said, acknowledging his defeat. He said he would turn his focus back to the investigations he is leading into the Biden administration as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. House Republicans will meet again on Monday in an effort to find a new speaker from among a flurry of new candidates. A group of four moderate House Democrats raised the prospect of empowering McHenry to bring specific bills before the House while the speaker fight plays out.

Democratic Leader Jeffries reiterated that his party was “ready, willing and able” to work with more traditional Republicans on a path to reopen the House —- particularly as Congress is being asked to consider Biden's aid package for Israel, Ukraine and other needs. But when Scalise won the nomination to replace McCarthy, Jordan's allies broke from party rules and blocked the Louisianan's rise. What's potentially more unsettling is that it's not at all clear what the House Republicans are even fighting over any more — let alone if any GOP leader can fix it.

The House was called into session for the third round of voting on Jim Jordan for speaker of the House. After a quorum call, the House is moving on to the vote on Jim Jordan's candidacy for speaker. Majority Leader Steve Scalise is sitting far away from leadership again. "Over his 16 years in the House, he has never supported a farm bill," Clark said.

The conference previously voted to nominate Scalise over Jordan on Wednesday, but the majority leader failed to attract enough support to win a majority in the full House and dropped his bid by Thursday evening. Jordan, the GOP’s latest nominee for speaker, who lost two rounds of votes this week, had floated the idea of temporarily empowering McHenry while he worked to shore up enough support for his own candidacy, according to three sources. The plan would have empowered McHenry until January, the sources said, allowing legislative business to continue in the face of two wars and a looming government shutdown. What makes this showdown between the two rivals different is that Garcia is now an elected member of Congress. That affords him the typical advantages of an incumbent, but it also means that the conservative congressman, who hasn’t always softened his positions to match the blue hue of his district, will have to defend his record.

Jordan himself said in the room afterward that he would remove his name and drop out. The situation is not fully different from the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far-right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall. The work of Congress, including next month’s Nov. 17 deadline to fund the government or risk a federal shutdown, would be almost certain to become anything but routine. Jordan’s wing of the party has already demanded severe budget cuts that he has promised to deliver, and aid to Ukraine would be seriously in doubt.