Republican leader Kevin McCarthy appeared on the brink of a turnaround after swaying more than a dozen holdouts in his party who had been preventing him from attaining the House speakership.
The House adjourned Friday afternoon, giving time for two of his supporters to return to the Capitol and for his allies to work the remaining six holdouts before the chamber reconvened at 1o p.m. that evening. McCarthy vowed — despite the two unsuccessful ballots earlier in the day — that by nighttime he would finally have the votes required to win.
“We’ll come back tonight … and finish this once and for all. It just reminds me of what my father always told me: It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” McCarthy said. “I think at the end of the day, we’re going to be more effective, more efficient.”
Republicans’ infighting over the speakership has caused a logjam unprecedented in modern history. With 13 failed rounds of voting, the House surpassed the number of votes it endured — nine — the last time such a stalemate occurred, in 1923.
Signs of movement finally emerged after McCarthy, his allies and the 20 holdouts spent all Thursday negotiating on and off the House floor, in an effort to hammer out a framework that would move a considerable number of votes to his side. Though the process resulted in McCarthy losing five ballots in one day, Republicans responsible for tracking how members would vote projected that at least 10 members would flip.
With the tentative agreement in hand on Friday, 14 of the McCarthy holdouts switched over on the 12th ballot, each flip prompting cheers from the GOP side of the aisle. Rep.-elect Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who for months had telegraphed that he was dead-set against McCarthy, shocked some of his colleagues with his move. Rep.-elect Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who had voted “present” over the previous two days to urge her colleagues to reach consensus, resumed backing McCarthy.
“That vote is an indicator that we have a negotiation in place that is a good-faith effort,” Rep.-elect Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.), who flipped for McCarthy, said after the 12th ballot. “The potential of what’s been described to us, pending approval, is transformative to empower the rank-and-file.”
On the 13th ballot, McCarthy gained support from one more holdout, Rep.-elect Andy Harris (R-Md.), capping the most momentum he had seen all week. Still, those 214 votes were not enough.
All Republicans then agreed to adjourn until Friday evening to allow for the return of two pro-McCarthy members who had missed the 12th and 13th ballots: Reps.-elect Wesley Hunt (Tex.) and Ken Buck (Colo.). Hunt had flown back to Texas to be with his wife, who just days before had delivered a baby several weeks premature and had since returned to the hospital with complications. Buck had traveled to Colorado for a medical procedure.
Even with their votes back in his column, McCarthy would need at least two more of the remaining GOP holdouts to reach the 218 he needs — or for at least three of them to vote “present,” thus lowering the majority threshold.
“Today was a big breakthrough day. We’re going to keep talking. Maybe tonight, we see some improvements,” Rep.-elect Steve Scalise (R-La.), a McCarthy supporter, said after the House adjourned in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, as they had all week, House Democrats unanimously backed caucus leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), who received 211 and 212 votes in Friday’s voting rounds. (Maryland Democrat David Trone missed the 12th ballot to undergo a surgery, but by 2 p.m. had returned to the House — still wearing his hospital socks — for the 13th ballot.)
Before the House convened, the incumbent Democrats who had survived the Capitol insurrection in the House chamber two years earlier showed up early to place purses, scarves and other personal belongings as placeholders on seats so they could sit together, in a physical display of their unity.
“For the first time in over 200 years, after 11 rounds of voting, we are unable to organize and begin to work on behalf of those who elected us to serve,” Rep.-elect James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) said as he nominated Jeffries on Friday. “Democrats are offering a candidate for speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, who is not just prepared to lead, but committed to preserving this democracy and enhance it.”
The concessions McCarthy has made to hard-right Republicans include lowering, from five to one, the number of members required to force a vote on ousting the speaker — a change that the California Republican had previously said he would not accept.
McCarthy also expressed willingness to place more members of the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus on the Rules Committee, which debates legislation before it moves to the floor. And he relented on allowing floor votes to institute term limits on members and to enact specific border policy legislation.
The proposed rule changes represent a stunning reversal that, if adopted, would weaken the position of speaker and make his hold on the job highly tenuous.
“I think the House is in a lot better place with some of the work that’s been done to democratize power out of the speakership and into the membership,” Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters Friday afternoon after lawmakers voted to adjourn. “That’s been our goal.”
Gaetz is one of six Republicans — along with Matthew M. Rosendale (Mt.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.) and Bob Good (Va.) — who voted against McCarthy on the 13th ballot. He reiterated that he wanted either to see McCarthy defeated or to change House rules so that McCarthy was imprisoned in “a functional straitjacket.”
“I’m very excited about the changes that we’ve made and that we’re still negotiating on spending and on the rules, and we’ll see how it goes tonight,” Gaetz said.
After executing “phase one” of the plan to get to this point, key McCarthy allies and several former holdouts deployed “phase two”: aggressively putting pressure on the remaining six. Lawmakers familiar with the discussions said they were trying to get some of that group to vote present.
For the first time this week, Republicans were optimistic they could elect McCarthy — so much so that former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters that Scalise had said the House would have her successor by nightfall.
But it took some time — and some cooling temperatures — to reach that state of projected confidence. It was clear Friday that impatience and frustration within the GOP had boiled over into open animosity between its pro- and anti-McCarthy factions. As Gaetz nominated Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for speaker on the 12th ballot, he accused McCarthy of dragging out an impossible campaign as “an exercise in vanity.”
“You only earn the position of speaker of the house if you can get the votes,” Gaetz said. “Mr. McCarthy doesn’t have the votes today. He will not have the votes tomorrow and he will not have the votes next week, next month, next year.”
Gaetz’s speech prompted Rep.-elect Michael Bost (R-Ill.), a McCarthy supporter, to interrupt him with angry shouting, something that had not happened during the first three days of balloting. Other GOP lawmakers walked off the House floor in silent protest.
“It’s just personal attacks,” Rep.-elect Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) told reporters after storming out. He said Gaetz was breaking rules by attacking McCarthy, rather than promoting his candidate, in a nominating speech.
It was periodically acknowledged Friday that it was the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when a pro-Trump mob overran the U.S. Capitol seeking to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win.
In her nomination speech for Jeffries, Rep.-elect Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) recalled how she and many of her colleagues were trapped in the same gallery two years ago, listening to rioters banging on doors and breaking windows just outside the chamber.
“What we lived through was an assault on our republic and on our democracy from within,” Escobar said. “I shudder to think what a Republican majority’s inability to govern would have meant on that day and what it could mean in the future for those of us who believe in defending our democracy abroad and now more than ever here at home.”
Liz Goodwin, Theodoric Meyer, Jacqueline Alemany, Paul Kane, Camila DeChalus and Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.