Though it will decide who is second in line for the presidency, this week’s battle for the Speaker’s gavel among House Republicans won’t be like a normal election. There will be no exit polls or campaign ads. And the candidates won’t end up having a televised debate, after an initial proposal from Fox News to hold one tonight was rejected.
Instead, the competition for support among the 224 members of the House Republican conference will play out more like a student-government election. While the final vote on the House floor will take place in full public view like much of the political dysfunction on Capitol Hill has over the past year, the vote to pick the Republican standard-bearer will take place behind closed doors via secret ballot. The candidates are campaigning as much on personal ties as ideology and form coalitions based on far more idiosyncratic factors than the factionalism on display in Washington of late.
The process also will take place with real uncertainty over what the rules will be. Although rules of the House Republican Conference currently require the party’s nominee to be Speaker to receive a simple majority, they can always be changed by a two-thirds vote, and there is the likelihood that they will be changed in order to minimize the chance of a revolt like the one Kevin McCarthy faced in January when he needed 15 ballots to become Speaker.
Here’s an overview of top candidates Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, their unique strengths and weaknesses — as well as the long-shot contenders should everything somehow go haywire.
.
Steve Scalise: The Next in Line
The Louisiana Republican is a longtime member of House leadership. Scalise, a conservative from the white-flight suburbs of New Orleans, was first elected to be whip, the No. 3 position in the House majority, in 2014 after beating out then-Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois in a ferocious intraparty race. He has since risen to post of majority leader under McCarthy and is hoping to take the next step up the ladder.
First elected in 2008, Scalise is probably best known for being a victim of the 2017 shooting that targeted a practice held by the Republican team in preparation for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Scalise was gravely wounded when a bullet struck his pelvis, and he spent nearly six weeks in the hospital. Scalise has since faced a new health challenge with a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. Though he has been undergoing chemotherapy, Scalise has described his ailment as “very treatable” and no obstacle to a leadership bid. (But that hasn’t stopped one skeptic, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, from raising his diagnosis as potentially disqualifying.)
Scalise will benefit from long-standing relationships across the Republican conference and his strong track record as a fundraiser. However, he does not have the best relationship with McCarthy and allies of the former Speaker have reportedly been making calls discouraging Republican members from backing Scalise. Despite his key position in House leadership, Scalise was notably not visible during the wrangling over the Speakership in January. Instead, McCarthy allies, such as Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the current Speaker pro tempore, and Garrett Graves of Louisiana, played far more central roles.
Already, Scalise has gotten endorsements from a number of Republicans, many in competitive districts, including Tony Gonzales of Texas, John James of Michigan, and Ashley Hinson of Iowa.
The Louisiana Republican is not controversy free, however. Early in his Louisiana career, he quipped that he was “David Duke without the baggage,” a reference to the former Ku Klux Klan leader who ran for governor of the state in 1991, and Scalise once spoke to a Duke-tied group. After some uproar, he denounced Duke, and his Democratic colleague, Cedric Richmond, spoke out publicly in his defense.
.
Jim Jordan: The Outsider Turned Insider
The Ohio Republican, who has been endorsed in the Speaker’s race by Donald Trump, started his congressional career as a nemesis of House Republican leadership. Infamously branded a “legislative terrorist” by then-Speaker John Boehner, Jordan was one of the ringleaders of the right-wing clique (which eventually became the Freedom Caucus) that constantly stymied Boehner in the nearly half-decade he held the Speaker’s gavel and eventually forced him to step down.
With Trump’s rise to power, Jordan has since transformed himself into a key ally of the former president and was rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the days after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Not only was the Ohio Republican a top defender of Trump around the Russia probe and the first impeachment; he has continued to do so since then overseeing a select committee on “the weaponization of government” and playing a key role in the impeachment inquiry recently opened against Joe Biden.
Jordan’s strength on the right of the conference will not only give him a strong base in the vote — many of those who rebelled against McCarthy are already backing him — but it might stand him well with moderates frustrated by the internal dissension. After all, it will be hard for anyone to paint a founder of the House Freedom Caucus as a stooge of the RINO Establishment, which could give Jordan more room to maneuver.
Prior to serving in Congress, Jordan was a champion wrestler in high school and college, a record that Trump emphasized in his late-night endorsement of the Ohio Republican on Thursday. This fact also comes with some baggage. While Jordan was the assistant coach of the Ohio State wrestling team, a team doctor was sexually abusing members of the team. Jordan has denied knowing of the abuse, while some of those on the team have said he knew.
Jordan, who invariably appears in Congress in his shirtsleeves, without a suit jacket, has been backed by a motley coalition that has been bolstered by Trump’s endorsement. In Jordan’s corner are his fellow Ohio Republicans, members of the House Freedom Caucus, and some more problematic members, including George Santos and Paul Gosar.
.
The Rest of the Field
If neither Scalise or Jordan prevail, there are a host of other options. One possibility, Oklahoma’s Kevin Hern, is the current leader of the Republican Study Committee and received a handful of token votes from the rebels in January throughout the 15-ballot fight to elect McCarthy. He announced Saturday morning he would not run after spending the week pondering a bid. Other potential Speakers include McHenry; Tom Cole, who chairs the Rules Committee; and even though he announced he would not run again … Kevin McCarthy, who has been floated as an emergency option after some Republicans have raised the alarm about the need for a quick congressional response to Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel. And things could get very exotic if somehow no Republican can receive the necessary 217 votes on the floor — and a deal has to be reached with Democrats.
