Near the end of the 14th round of voting for House speaker Friday night, all eyes were on Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). All week, Gaetz had voted for someone other than Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for speaker, as part of a group of hard-right holdouts dead set on denying McCarthy the gavel.
On this night, however, Gaetz voted “present” for the first time. Many in the GOP conference erupted into cheers and gave Gaetz a standing ovation, seeming to believe that his vote was enough for McCarthy to win at last.
It was not.
Confusion quickly set in. The room grew quiet, except for the sound of some Democrats laughing as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle came to the realization that Gaetz would have needed to vote for McCarthy, not just present, for McCarthy to win.
As the clerk tallied the votes, McCarthy and some of his allies rushed over to Gaetz to engage in somber conversation.
Just before a dejected McCarthy walked away, Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) stormed over and leaned angrily toward Gaetz, seeming on the verge of violence. Rogers was restrained by Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who covered Rogers’s mouth and led him away. Rogers stormed off the House floor and into a cloakroom.
The near-physical confrontation elicited gasps and shouts from Democrats. And though McCarthy later won the speakership on the 15th ballot, the incident left a lasting impression on those present as a bizarre endcap to a historically dysfunctional week in Congress.
“I’m going to get sworn in 1 a.m. on Saturday after two members almost got into a physical altercation on the House floor after my 15th vote for speaker on my fourth day here,” freshman Rep.-elect Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said, when asked about his first week in Washington. “So, kind of a s—show.”
See the remarkable near-altercation on the House floor in photographs here:
Dylan Wells and Paul Kane contributed to this report.