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Democratic Leader Jeffries reiterated that his party was “ready, willing and able” to work with more traditional Republicans on a path to reopen the House —- particularly as Congress is being asked to consider Biden's aid package for Israel, Ukraine and other needs. But when Scalise won the nomination to replace McCarthy, Jordan's allies broke from party rules and blocked the Louisianan's rise. What's potentially more unsettling is that it's not at all clear what the House Republicans are even fighting over any more — let alone if any GOP leader can fix it.
Georgia Rep. Austin Scott says he's running for speaker
Some members have also raised the possibility of a consensus candidate if Jordan fails to secure the required support to become speaker. North Carolina Rep. Greg Murphy raised McHenry and Reps. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma and Byron Donalds of Florida as potential "compromise" candidates. "Our conference still has to come together and is not there," he said. "There are still some people that have their own agendas, and I was very clear, we have to have everybody put their agendas on the side and focus on what this country needs." Exasperated Democrats, who have been waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthy’s ouster, urged them to figure it out. Scalise has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is being treated, but he has also said he was definitely up for the speaker’s job.
House Republicans vote to drop Jim Jordan; more candidates enter speaker race - The Washington Post
House Republicans vote to drop Jim Jordan; more candidates enter speaker race.
Posted: Fri, 20 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
District 32
But when Scalise won the nomination to replace McCarthy, Jordan’s allies broke from party rules and blocked the Louisianan’s rise. What’s potentially more unsettling is that it’s not at all clear what the House Republicans are even fighting over any more — let alone if any GOP leader can fix it. This district runs from Brea and Fullerton in north Orange County, out east to “Little India” in Artesia, before heading south to the center of the region’s political gravity in Westminster and Garden Grove — Little Saigon. Once presumed to be a Republican stronghold, the stereotype of a community full of anti-communist Cold Warriors hasn’t rung true for a while.
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Jordan is "no longer" the speaker designee within the House Republican Conference, multiple members told NBC News. More than half a dozen Republican men have launched or are considering a speaker bid, but no women. Scalise has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer and is being treated, but he has also said he was definitely up for the speaker’s job. Weeks of heated, fiery meetings later, Republicans have drifted far off track from what had been their House majority’s stated priorities of cutting spending and other goals. Angry that Scalise didn’t seem to get fair treatment, more mainstream Republicans staged their own revolt against hard-liner Jordan, saying he didn’t deserve the gavel.
The House was called into session for the third round of voting on Jim Jordan for speaker of the House. After a quorum call, the House is moving on to the vote on Jim Jordan's candidacy for speaker. Majority Leader Steve Scalise is sitting far away from leadership again. "Over his 16 years in the House, he has never supported a farm bill," Clark said.
Republicans pick Jim Jordan as nominee for House speaker
Jordan himself said in the room afterward that he would remove his name and drop out. The situation is not fully different from the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far-right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall. The work of Congress, including next month’s Nov. 17 deadline to fund the government or risk a federal shutdown, would be almost certain to become anything but routine. Jordan’s wing of the party has already demanded severe budget cuts that he has promised to deliver, and aid to Ukraine would be seriously in doubt.
Tom Kean of New Jersey voted McCarthy, another flip away from Jordan. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., voted for Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., once again. Rep. Ken Buck's name also was included on a draft of the letter, but his office said he had been included in error. "After retiring from the military in 2014, I made a solemn promise to the Jewish people that if anything like what took place on October 7, 2023, were to ever happen, that I would help them and their nation to the best of my ability," he wrote.
Top Republicans continue to express no interest in seeking help from Democrats to resolve their internal party problems. It is unclear whether Jordan will fall to the same fate as Scalise, as winning the nomination is far different from winning on the House floor. “We need to come together and figure out who our speaker is going to be,” Mr. Jordan said, acknowledging his defeat. He said he would turn his focus back to the investigations he is leading into the Biden administration as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. House Republicans will meet again on Monday in an effort to find a new speaker from among a flurry of new candidates. A group of four moderate House Democrats raised the prospect of empowering McHenry to bring specific bills before the House while the speaker fight plays out.
Jim Jordan out as Republican nominee for House speaker: Highlights
The conference previously voted to nominate Scalise over Jordan on Wednesday, but the majority leader failed to attract enough support to win a majority in the full House and dropped his bid by Thursday evening. Jordan, the GOP’s latest nominee for speaker, who lost two rounds of votes this week, had floated the idea of temporarily empowering McHenry while he worked to shore up enough support for his own candidacy, according to three sources. The plan would have empowered McHenry until January, the sources said, allowing legislative business to continue in the face of two wars and a looming government shutdown. What makes this showdown between the two rivals different is that Garcia is now an elected member of Congress. That affords him the typical advantages of an incumbent, but it also means that the conservative congressman, who hasn’t always softened his positions to match the blue hue of his district, will have to defend his record.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is backing Emmer for speaker. McCarthy did not publicly endorse a candidate when Rep. Jim Jordan and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise vied for the nomination. “If you guys try to do that, you’ll figure out who the next person on Kevin’s list is,” McHenry told the room, three sources said, referring to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s secret list of GOP lawmakers who would serve as temporary speaker in the event of a vacancy. The Ohio Republican said at a news conference that Republicans need to consider why voters sent them to Congress.
A founder of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Jordan’s run essentially collapsed in large part because more centrist Republicans are revolting over the nominee they view as too extreme and the hardball tactics being used to win their votes. They have been bombarded with harassing phone calls and even reported death threats . The outcome left Republicans dejected, frustrated and sinking deeper into turmoil, another week without a House speaker bordering on a full-blown crisis. House Republicans have no realistic or working plan to unite the fractured GOP majority, elect a new speaker and return to the work of Congress that has been languishing since hard-liners ousted Kevin McCarthy at the start of the month. So Jordan then made the choice to go for a second ballot, and that was basically a referendum asking his colleagues if they would vote for him on the floor. So Jordan wanted to be able to go to the floor fast, as fast as Friday to lock it up, but those numbers were just so far away from the 217 he'll likely need on the floor.
"I feel confident I can win the votes where others could not. I have no special interests to serve; I’m only in this to do what’s best for our Nation and to steady the ship for the 118th Congress," Bergman said in a statement. Jordan also received an important nod Friday from the Republican Party’s campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who made an attempt to unify the fighting factions. But Jordan’s allies swung into high gear at a chance for the hard-right leader to seize the gavel. In announcing his decision to withdraw from the nomination, Scalise declined to throw his support behind Jordan as the bitter rivalry deepened. “It’s got to be people that aren’t doing it for themselves,” he said late Thursday. “If we’re going to be the majority party, we have to act like the majority party,” said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a former president of the “tea party” freshmen class of 2011 who posed a last-ditch challenge to Jordan.
The Republican chaos that erupted Oct. 3, when a small band of eight hardliners led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida orchestrated McCarthy’s historic ouster, has cascaded into angry grievances, new factions and untested alliances. Friday’s vote was 194 for Jordan, his lowest tally yet, and 210 for Jeffries, with two absences on each side. LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network.
Jordan's efforts to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump is a key concern of one of the most vocal opponents to his speaker bid, Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado. During his press conference, Jordan was asked about communications he had with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about ways Mike Pence could, as vice president, stop the certification of the election results. The freshman New York Republican told NBC News that he supported Jordan previously because he "felt he could unify the conference." With Jordan out of the speaker's race, Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told NBC News after the closed-door House GOP Conference that he plans to run for speaker. He concluded by arguing that his military experience made him "uniquely qualified" to determine the truth on the ground. He said he wanted to "bring that information back to Congress where I can hopefully increase the sense of urgency for my colleagues of both parties to put aside their petty personal and significant political differences and act in the best interest of America and our beleaguered allies."
Just as handfuls of Republicans announced they wouldn’t go for Scalise, the situation flipped Friday and holdouts were sticking with Scalise, McCarthy or someone other than Jordan. “We’re trying to figure out if there’s a way we can get back with a Republican-only solution,” said veteran legislator Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.
Democrats now outnumber Republicans here, though turnout still tends to favor the GOP. (We had 18 until this year; after the 2020 Census count found that the state population had shrunk, the L.A. area lost one representative.) You can double check your district and your representative here. The House has a total of 435 representatives, each of whom represents a district. District lines are drawn so that each represents roughly the same number of people — 700,000 on average.
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