Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Friday morning signaled that he wouldn’t drop out of the race to become the next speaker of the House—just hours before he faced a third ballot in which he lost even more support for his uphill bid.
Requiring a majority of the full House, 20 Republicans voted against Jordan in the first roll call vote on Tuesday—nearly seven times as many as he could afford to lose. After 22 GOP colleagues and every Democrat voted against him in a second vote on Wednesday, Jordan said that the deadlock needs to end. “The quickest way to get all this working is to get a speaker elected,” he said. “That’s what I’m hoping we can do today.”
By Thursday, as the unprecedented crisis dragged into its 17th day, Jordan privately indicated that he would continue his campaign to become speaker but, in the meantime, could be prepared to back a plan handing expanded powers to Rep. Patrick McHenry, the speaker pro tempore, to allow urgent House business to be conducted until a permanent speaker is elected.
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But even that proposal ultimately fell apart during a tense meeting of the Republican conference, leaving the party with no clear path toward ending the dysfunction.
On Friday, at least three Republicans who had supported Jordan in prior ballots voted against him, suggesting his support was evaporating with each ballot. Jordan did not immediately indicate what he might do after the failed vote.
The ugly psychodrama began on Oct. 3, when a mere eight Republican lawmakers voted to remove Kevin McCarthy from the speakership. The move—which was the first time in U.S. history that the House has toppled its leader—came amid GOP infighting and turmoil that has pitted a group of hard-line conservatives against the mainstream of the party.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) was initially nominated as the Republican conference’s choice to succeed McCarthy, but his speakership ultimately crashed and burned last week after failing to secure enough support. Jordan was then given the GOP nomination, but his ambitions have so far been thwarted by Republican moderates who are suspicious of his track record.
“We need to get to work for the American people,” Jordan said earlier this week as the chaos dragged on. “We need to do what we said we were going to do, 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. We can’t open the House until we get a speaker.”
The Jan. 6 committee deemed Jordan a “significant player” in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He has also contributed to previous government shutdowns, with a new shutdown looming once again due to the House’s standstill. Some colleagues who have opposed Jordan’s speakership have also been appalled by the harassment they say they’ve received since voting against him, which has included angry messages and even “credible death threats.”
—Riley Rogerson contributed reporting.
