House GOP 'Back To The Drawing Board' After Jim Jordan's Exit From Speaker Race

WASHINGTON ― House Republicans hit the reset button on their search for a new House speaker and will try again next week to find a leader, after Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) bid came to a whimpering end Friday.

Republicans voted against keeping Jordan as their speaker-designee by a margin of 86 to 112, lawmakers told reporters after their meeting in the Capitol basement. Jordan then accepted the result.

“We put the question to them. They made a different decision. I told the conference that I appreciated getting to work with everyone, talking to everyone,” Jordan told reporters after the vote.

“Unfortunately, Jim is no longer going to be the nominee,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters. “We will have to go back to the drawing board.”

The clean slate brought out a plethora of announced and potential candidates for the speaker post, which can be won by wrangling 217 votes from the 221-member House Republican conference.

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who as party whip is the third-ranking leader, is reportedly running. Emmer would likely be the front-runner, having helped flip control of the chamber back to Republicans as head of the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2020 and 2022.

Republicans have had no leader since chucking McCarthy out of the speaker’s suite earlier this month because he’d been overly cooperative with Democrats.

All House business has ceased as Republicans try to find a replacement for McCarthy, but they’ve been unable to agree among themselves after first nominating Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and then Jordan.

At least 20 Republicans voted against Jordan on the House floor three separate times this week, depriving him of the required 217 votes. Jordan received only 194 votes Friday in his third attempt.

Jordan had told HuffPost before the secret ballot among Republicans on Friday that he intended to keep trying to win his colleagues over. He said he had lost his most recent House floor vote by a smaller margin than some people expected.

House members headed home for the weekend.

“Monday, we’re going to come back and start over,” Scalise told reporters.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) fell short three times in House votes over his potential speakership.

Now Republicans will go back to the beginning of the process. A candidate forum is set for Monday evening and a series of votes is set for Tuesday.

With Jordan and McCarthy off the table, the list of actual and potential speaker candidates is long.

In addition to Emmer, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) — who won a few floor votes for speaker in January, when McCarthy took 15 rounds to lock down the speakership — has tossed his hat in the ring.

Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who ran as token opposition in the party vote that originally made Jordan the speaker-designee, is running again.

Another candidate is Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), who chairs the Republican Study Committee, the House GOP’s biggest intraparty group. If successful, he would be the first Oklahoman to hold the speakership since Carl Albert, the so-called Little Giant.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), a former Rules Committee chair, has also said he is running, as has Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.).

Others who are potential candidates or said to be informally testing the waters for a run include Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), as well as Texas Republicans Roger Williams and Jodey Arrington. Williams heads up the Small Business Committee, while Arrington is chair of the Budget Committee.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the popular chair of the House Rules Committee, has seen his name bandied about, but he has insisted that he is not interested in the job.

One name that won’t be in the mix is McCarthy’s, despite the Californian getting two floor votes for speaker Friday and many in the conference remaining bitter about his ouster. He’s thrown his support behind Emmer.

McCarthy told reporters Friday that the group of eight Republicans who made his ouster possible had done “insurmountable” damage to the country.

“I’ve never seen this amount of damage done [from] just a few people for their own personalities, for their own fear of what’s going through,” McCarthy said.

“I’m concerned about where we go from here.”

Over the now two and a half weeks of the impasse, House Democrats have stuck with their leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), and been content to watch the Republicans struggle.

“The American public wants responsible leaders focused on governing, growing our economy, and strengthening our national security,” said Viet Shelton, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Instead, House Republicans are giving them chaos, dysfunction, and the [Make America Great Again] Hunger Games of 2023.”