While House Republicans prepare to fight over who will be the next speaker, they’re already battling over how to conduct the election, complicating matters for an already divided conference.
Currently, there is no consensus on whether to maintain the rule that it takes a simple majority of the Republican Conference to advance a speaker candidate to the full House. The alternative is to adopt a proposal from centrist Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and hard-line conservative Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) that would require 217 votes within the conference in order to avoid the type of protracted fight that unfolded in January.
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The race, as it stands now, is between House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH). At the moment, neither has the 217 votes necessary to become speaker. And with elections set for Wednesday, if the new rule is adopted, it could make the voting behind closed doors go on for a while. If the rule isn’t adopted and the candidate goes to the floor, it could prolong the vote on the floor and mirror the scenes of January’s speaker election.
“To me, a majority is good enough,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), the chairman of the Rules Committee. “Usually, you don’t win these things that close. Somebody makes a break, and it’s pretty good. But again, I would rather reestablish the principle that when a conference makes a decision on procedural votes, and, you know, really the selection of speaker, that everybody falls in line.”
He said that the proposed rule change to raise the threshold is “empowering a small minority” at “the expense of the majority.”
“I’ve certainly not always voted in conference for the person who won the election, but I never dreamed of not voting for that person on the floor,” he continued.
Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), who has endorsed Scalise, also said he is against the rule change and wants it to stay a simple majority out of conference to advance a candidate to the floor as opposed to 217 votes.
But, for some members, this is a rule change they view as essential and something that must occur in order to save the conference from embarrassment on the floor, as they believe there will still be people who vote against the will of the conference because it’s not who they want as speaker.
Fitzpatrick, who proposed the rule, said that while there were more than 90 members who signed the letter in support of the change, there were more who wanted to sign on but couldn’t due to the timing of when they had to file the letter.
“We believe that people, you know, whoever the candidate is, they should emerge with 217 from conference so that there is one vote on the House floor. We don’t want to repeat what happened last week or in January,” he said.
Freshman Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) said he is “a big fan” of the proposed rule change.
“I believe that in order for us to govern with individuals … whatever the numbers we have right now, I unfortunately believe it’s the best way forward,” he said.
Miller, who supports Jordan, also proposed in conference giving members an extra week to vet the speaker candidates before voting on them.
While this is unlikely to happen, Miller said he thinks it would be good for the conference to have the ability to go through the rule changes and the candidates so there is not a repeat of what happened last week when former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted from office.
Then, complicating matters is also the lingering third candidate who’s not officially in the race, McCarthy himself.
The former speaker opened the door back up to potentially being reelected as speaker on Monday, and he has at least two members who will support him over the two other candidates regardless of whether he’s running or not.
“At this point, unless Kevin McCarthy says otherwise and he’s out, I’m supporting Kevin McCarthy,” said Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL).
The other member is Rep. John Duarte (R-CA), who also said he will only support McCarthy as speaker.
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While there are a number of other members expressing their support for seeing McCarthy reinstated as speaker, the likelihood of that actually happening is slim since the eight Republicans who voted to remove him aren’t likely to switch their votes and support him.
“After letting this process shape up over the last several days and getting two strong candidates that the majority of the conference are ready to back, McCarthy throwing his hat back in the ring is one of the least productive things that could happen,” a GOP aide told the Washington Examiner.
