When eight House Republicans voted to oust Kevin McCarthy, it wasn’t inevitable that the search for a new speaker would end with Republicans accepting—even eagerly embracing—the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
The elevation of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), one of the key architects of Trump’s strategy to overturn his defeat, ensured it did.
Democrats told The Daily Beast Wednesday they have no choice but to work with Johnson, noting that McCarthy wasn’t exactly a moderate himself—and also has his own history of undermining the 2020 election and sanitizing Trump after Jan. 6.
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But Johnson securing the gavel could prove to be a ‘careful what you wish for’ moment, as the Louisiana Republican’s special brand of Christian nationalism, coupled with an openness to extreme spending cuts, may make him even more intractable than McCarthy.
Certainly, nearly every Democrat finds Johnson’s own views more extreme than his predecessor’s. But with the House coming out of paralysis after three weeks, and with funding cliffs and urgent matters looming, they are preparing to look past their differences and try to find some common ground.
No Amicus of Mine
Before running for the speakership on Tuesday, Johnson was perhaps best known as a key player in Trump’s legal and procedural efforts to keep himself in power by fighting the outcome of the 2020 election.
That history was mentioned often by Democrats on Wednesday in their comments opposing Johnson’s speakership, which subtly and not-so-subtly referenced how the election denial push undermined democracy.
Not only did Johnson amplify an array of disproven fraud claims—including the wild theory that U.S. voting software was made by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez—Johnson organized the effort to get a majority of GOP lawmakers to sign onto an amicus brief in support of a Texas lawsuit to overturn the results in key states. He solicited their support by framing it as a “request from President Trump” and wrote to members that Trump “will be anxiously awaiting the final list” of those who signed the brief.
When that lawsuit failed, one day before Jan. 6, Johnson privately urged his colleagues to object to the electoral vote counting on the House floor, according to a new Politico report.
That history is not the reason why Johnson claimed the Speaker’s gavel. But it certainly helped his unexpected and abrupt rise. GOP Whip Tom Emmer’s record as a Republican who voted to certify the election may have actually cost him the speakership.
In Johnson’s case, he was able to use his election-denying history as a rallying cry. When Democrats and the press began questioning his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, Republicans closed ranks around him.
When Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) called out Johnson on the House floor as an architect of the election-denying effort during his speech, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) proudly yelled, “Damn right!”
After winning the nomination, when Johnson faced a question from ABC News’ Rachel Scott about his 2020 denialism, the GOP lawmakers flanking him began booing and smirking, with Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) telling Scott to “shut up” and “go away!”
Since winning the speakership on Tuesday, Johnson has continued to deflect questions on whether he still believes the 2020 election was stolen.
Even Republican lawmakers who opposed the plan to contest the election seemed eager to leave it in the past.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), a conservative who faced considerable blowback for his pushback against 2020 fraud claims, chalks up his difference with Johnson to a “reasonable disagreement.”
“We move forward and move onward,” Roy told The Daily Beast.
Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX) told reporters that Johnson’s record on 2020 was “completely irrelevant” and accused Democrats of “living in the past” by bringing it up.
“We're looking forward,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who voted to certify the election. “They're looking back.”
Trump Card
In reality, Johnson’s history on the issue is far from irrelevant. The 2020 election remains incredibly important to the most powerful person in the GOP—Trump—and Emmer’s certification vote stance was no small reason why Trump issued a scorching statement torpedoing his speaker bid.
Johnson’s role in trying to overturn the election was a signal to GOP voters and Republicans in Congress that he was sufficiently “conservative” and aligned with their values.
Should Johnson remain the Speaker through the 2024 election, his approach to the 2020 election—which saw him discount the will of voters and an abundance of facts about the fairness of the election in order to keep Trump in power—will be anything but a relic of the past.
If another close Biden win in the Electoral College is contested by Trump, Johnson would have significant influence over the House’s vote certification procedures.
“Donald Trump has cemented his control over the Republican conference in the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the special committee to investigate Jan. 6. “One of his enablers on January 6 has just become the Speaker of the House of Representatives.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) said that fear “absolutely” puts more pressure on Democrats to flip the House next year.
“We believe that when people go vote, their will should be respected. There are a number of Republicans that don't appear to have that view,” Lieu told the Daily Beast. “And so I hope the American people consider that when they themselves go vote over next year.”
But if Johnson’s ascent is giving Democrats second thoughts about their decision to let eight Republicans boot McCarthy from the speakership, they weren’t saying so. At the time, they said that no one could be worse than the California Republican, arguing his own views didn’t matter because he was unshakably beholden to the right flank of his conference.
Working Relationship
Despite Johnson’s 2020 election denialism—as well as his stridently right-wing positions on LGBTQ rights and abortion—no Democratic lawmaker who spoke to The Daily Beast expressed any belief that he would do much differently than any other Republican.
“We’ll never look back nostalgically and pine for Kevin McCarthy to be speaker,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA). He described Johnson as someone who can put a “pseudo-legal gloss on a lot of extreme MAGA ideas,” and he said Johnson’s speakership was “not going to be pretty.”
“But the last 10 months have been a shitshow by any measure,” he continued.
“It’s not good,” Huffman said. “But substantively, there’s no difference between Mike Johnson and Kevin McCarthy. Democrats will do all the same things.”
Still, many Democrats were clear they find Johnson’s views to be soberingly extreme, if not dangerous, and spoke of them in a way they rarely spoke of McCarthy.
“There were a few House leaders who really distinguished themselves for the aggressiveness with which they pushed the big lie among their colleagues in the House, in litigation. Johnson was among the leaders of that pack,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who served on the special committee investigating Jan. 6.
“So he has distinguished himself as being one of the primary antagonists to our democratic institutions and our free and fair elections,” Schiff said.
Regardless, Democrats will have to find a way to work with Johnson. The short-term government spending bill Congress approved last month is set to expire Nov. 17, and both parties are eager to pass an aid package for Israel.
“We have to work with him because we still want to get things done,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA). “There's a lot of people on the other side that I disagree with on a variety of issues, but we still try to find the things we could do to work together.”
‘Poison Pills’
It remains to be seen how exactly that work will take shape. Despite animosity between House Democrats and Republicans, McCarthy and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reportedly had a strong working relationship.
Jeffries and Johnson will have to build rapport from scratch. Jeffries said on CNN Wednesday morning that he doesn’t know Johnson well, but called him an “extreme right-wing ideologue.” (In speeches on the floor, Jeffries and Johnson did exchange kinder words of hope that they could work together.)
But Beyer offered a glimmer of hope for collaboration. Perhaps, he said, Johnson can forge a more trusting relationship with Jeffries than McCarthy had.
“It may be harder than it was with Kevin. But on the other hand, we didn't exactly find Speaker McCarthy reliable. And so perhaps it can be different,” Beyer said.
When the stakes were high during McCarthy’s reign as speaker, Democrats voted with Republicans. Democrats joined Republicans en masse to bail the country out of a catastrophic default on U.S. debt and a government shutdown. But Democrats either had a hand in crafting those measures—Biden negotiated the debt ceiling bill—or they were free from GOP priorities.
Freshman Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said the caucus is concerned about Republicans introducing “poison pills” into legislation that would make bills impossible for Democrats to support. In one such situation under McCarthy, Republicans amended the National Defense Authorization Act to limit abortion access for service members.
“Some may argue that this guy is more extreme than McCarthy, but only time will tell how he decides to govern,” Frost told the Daily Beast.
Raskin, who served with Johnson on the Judiciary Committee, said Johnson has “much better manners than Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene or Donald Trump.” But he added that his politics “tend toward the theocratic direction.”
Democrats have noted that Johnson is one of the most anti-abortion members in Congress, is staunchly opposed to gay marriage, has written in support of the criminalization of gay sex, has called homosexuality “sinful,” and has pushed Amazon to lift its ban on conversion therapy books.
And yet Democrats indicated they have to work with him.
“Unlike some other members, we're not interested in Civil War, and we want government to work,” Raskin said. “We have a Democrat in the White House. The Democrats control the Senate. And we want to make sure that the House will no longer be an impediment to effective government.”
