For years, a rotating cast of House GOP leaders have shared a fatal flaw: an inclination to only address their most immediate problems.
In January, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) won the speaker’s gavel partially through this approach. In order to win over conservative detractors, he acquiesced to their demands to make it easier to remove him, creating a problem he knew he'd face one day. Sure enough, 10 months later, those McCarthy critics took advantage of the change to take him out.
But as Republicans battle over who will be their next speaker—Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), or perhaps someone else—their problems are all converging at once. And to solve one problem, they may need to address all of them.
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Or, in true House Republican fashion, they may not get through any of them—at least not this week.
The first problem is obvious: The United States House of Representatives doesn’t have a speaker. The temporary caretaker, Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC), has taken an extremely narrow view of his powers—essentially that he can’t do anything but facilitate a speaker election—so all legislative activity has come to a standstill.
Even after the Hamas-led attacks against Israel over the weekend, lawmakers are under the impression they can’t even adopt a resolution stating U.S. support for Israel, let alone approve a military or humanitarian aid package. Even routine intelligence briefings have been complicated by the leadership turmoil.
Without a speaker, the House also can’t continue working on spending bills. And with just 39 days until government funding runs out, Republicans were hoping to use this time to pass appropriations bills to put them in a better negotiating stance with the Democratic Senate, which is on recess until Oct. 16.
This is where the problems start getting real for Scalise and Jordan.
McCarthy was able to forestall a government shutdown by arguing to his GOP colleagues that a 47-day stopgap funding measure made sense; it would allow them to finish their work on appropriations bills. (Ultimately, that decision was the catalyst for him losing his job.)
But the truth is, the bills House Republicans are passing aren’t going to become law anyway. The House GOP has ignored the spending levels McCarthy agreed to earlier in the year with President Joe Biden, and senators in both parties have been clear they will not swallow this blithe fiction that McCarthy and other Republican leaders have been telling members.
McCarthy was always going to have a problem on his hands eventually. Just like former speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan before him, for McCarthy, it was tomorrow’s problem until it wasn’t.
Unfortunately for Scalise and Jordan, they’re both now stuck defending a doomed strategy. And as they both make the case that they should win the speakership, they are stuck telling members that, actually, this strategy can work.
To make matters more complicated, there are plenty of more moderate Republicans who know the gambit is hopeless, and want assurances that the future speaker won’t throw the government into a shutdown—while there are more conservative members who want assurances that the speaker won’t cave and just extend government funding (or swallow the Democratic Senate’s numbers). They want assurances that the speaker would actually shut down the government.
Jordan and Scalise both spent the weekend pounding the phones, talking to members and fine-tuning their pitches.
Sources from both camps projected cautious optimism to The Daily Beast, but both sides seem to think it’s a close race, with a “candidate forum” scheduled for Tuesday night that could be the deciding factor. With 221 Republicans in the conference, the winning candidate needs 111 votes to receive the internal nomination.
But even though Republicans have said they’d like to go to the floor Wednesday to elect the new speaker, these sources from both Scalise and Jordan’s camps expressed concern about doing so before it’s clear that anyone has enough votes to win—roughly 217 Republican votes, depending on how many members actually show up.
Essentially, the GOP nominee for speaker needs near-unanimous support from the Republican conference—and lawmakers know this is their opportunity, just like in January, to extract concessions from leadership. That means, as imperative as it is to elevate a new speaker, the slog could drag on far beyond this week.
As Jordan and Scalise work this initial vote, they’ve been resistant to get too specific on how they’d handle appropriations bills and a shutdown standoff.
A source familiar with Scalise’s pitch told The Daily Beast that the majority leader has been telling members he doesn’t want to signal to the Senate or the White House what he’s willing to do on appropriations. And a source familiar with Jordan’s pitch said that Jordan has only been telling members he’d be open to a long-term continuing resolution that would impose a 1 percent cut on current government spending.
This source told The Daily Beast that a spending bill strategy was “the diciest thing that either of them are having to deal with.”
“Neither one of them can say they’ll take the Senate numbers,” this source said.
Both men seem to know that getting too specific on a strategy that’s ill-fated could be their downfall—either behind closed doors during the initial vote, on the floor when they need almost every Republican, or come Nov. 17 when government funding runs out.
As far as this first test goes, another Jordan source told The Daily Beast that the Ohio Republican views himself as “the underdog” in the race, “but feels like he has momentum on his side.”
According to Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight, who has been tracking statements of support, Jordan currently leads Scalise in public endorsements, 42 to 31, as of Sunday evening.
So far, Scalise is consolidating support among high-ranking Republicans, like Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), leadership allies, Southern state delegations, Armed Services Republicans, and some lawmakers facing tough re-election fights in 2024.
But Jordan has picked up a surprisingly broad range of support in the conference, winning the support of several key members on the right flank—even some swing district members. Crucially, he seems to have taken some unexpected votes from Scalise’s bases of support. And Jordan also won what might be the most critical single endorsement anywhere in GOP politics: Donald Trump.
After seemingly entertaining the idea of serving as a short-term speaker himself, Trump’s decision to back Jordan was first announced by Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), scuttling plans for Trump to make a dramatic visit to Capitol Hill where he would raise expectations that he may actually run for speaker only to endorse Jordan. Instead, Trump had to settle with a social media post.
“Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, D.C.,” Trump ultimately wrote in a late night post on his Truth Social platform on Friday. “He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”
With two-thirds of the House GOP conference still officially unspoken for, however, the race remains wide open. Notably, several of the eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy have not committed; their ringleader, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), has said he would gladly support either man.
As Gaetz suggested, there’s not much ideological daylight between Jordan and Scalise. Jordan is a 59-year-old conservative who loves Donald Trump and hates welfare, government spending, and Joe Biden. (Jordan, a former NCAA champion wrestler who later became a coach, is also accused of knowing about and doing nothing to address a sex-abuse scandal involving one of the other coaches preying on students.) Scalise is a 58-year-old conservative who loves Donald Trump and hates welfare, government spending, and Joe Biden. (He also once said he was “David Duke without the baggage.”)
Both voted to overturn the 2020 election, but Scalise is seen as the steadier, more establishment pick in contrast to Jordan, the founding chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.
There’s one particularly unusual factor, however, that could influence the outcome of the race: the long-running beef between McCarthy and Scalise. The Louisiana Republican had always been the clear No. 2 of the House GOP, but Scalise’s eagerness to explore a run after McCarthy’s first bid for the speakership faltered in 2015 was never quite forgiven.
While the two were publicly close allies, privately it was understood that Scalise had his eyes on the job. His team quickly launched into action almost as soon as McCarthy announced he would not seek to win back the office last week.
Now, McCarthy’s operation is “almost entirely behind Jordan,” said a senior GOP aide, which is why some moderate allies of the former speaker may be lining up behind his bid.
But the senior GOP aide continued “there are serious worries about Jordan’s political operation,” noting that the Ohio Republican has virtually no experience in helping House Republicans win competitive races against Democrats.
Instead, as a Freedom Caucus leader, Jordan has spent the past six years focused on getting even more hardline conservatives elected in red districts. Scalise, on the other hand, has been a key player in the House GOP’s efforts to win the House majority: his campaign has raised over $75 million since 2017, much of which has been spread around to hundreds of incumbents, challengers, and other GOP organizations.
While Jordan has clear appeal with small dollar donors in the conservative grassroots, Scalise also boasts strong relationships with the big GOP donors who fuel their top leaders and the party’s super PACs.
“Small dollar fundraising is a given for someone going for speakership, but his lack of major donor relationships is a major red flag for some members,” said the senior GOP aide.
Despite the fact that McCarthy’s operation seems to be pushing Jordan, a comeback bid by the former speaker—at some point—has never felt entirely off the table.
In the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel, some diehard McCarthy allies insisted now is not the time for a protracted fight to select the highest-ranking member of Congress.
“Removing [McCarthy] from office, mid-term, was idiotic,” tweeted Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY). “Doing so as Israel faces an all out attack is dangerous. Uncertainty and chaos in the U.S. breeds vulnerability around the world. The House should immediately reinstate McCarthy and stop screwing around.”
