2023 Second House Speaker Election

Overview

2023 Second House Speaker Election refers to the attempt by Congress in the United States House of Representatives to vote for a Speaker of the House for the second time in 2023 after the Speaker they elected the first time, Kevin McCarthy, was ousted in an unprecedented removal of the Speaker in October of 2023. As of October 18th, representatives Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan have been seen as the leading candidates to win the job, but neither could get enough support to win the position, with Jordan losing a vote on the House floor.

Background

On October 3rd, 2023, Kevin McCarthy was voted out as Speaker of the House after Matt Gaetz led a charge with a few other far-right Republicans to vote for his removal from the position. Those Republicans joined all the Democrats in voting for McCarthy's removal, leading to the first removal of a House Speaker in United States History. South Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry was named interim speaker.^[1]

Developments

In the weeks that followed McCarthy's outsing, the leading candidates for Speaker were Republicans Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan.^[2] In a closed-door meeting, Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives, first voted for Scalise to be the candidate over Jordan. However, Republicans will need to be nearly completely unified in order to elect a speaker, and Scalise did not win the vote by a massive margin, causing him to withdraw his candidacy.

This left Jim Jordan to be the leading candidate. However, Democrats and some Republicans were against Jordan's candidacy.^[3] Democrats were against Jordan due to his support of overturning the 2020 Presidential Election results. He has also been endorsed by Donald Trump.

On October 17th, a vote to name Jordan House Speaker was taken to the floor. Jordan failed to win the vote, as 20 Republicans voted against him. These included McCarthy loyalists, members representing swing districts, and at least one Republican (Ken Buck) who said he would not vote for someone who voted to overturn the 2020 Election.^[4] He lost a second Speaker vote held on October 18th, with two more Republicans voting against him.^[5]

According to NBC News, the wife of Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican who has not voted for Jordan, received threatening text messages from anonymous sources due to Bacon's refusal to vote for Jordan. The news, tweeted by Kyle Griffin,^[6] gained over 6,300 retweets and 13,000 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Election of Mike Johnson

On October 25th, 2023, Republicans unanimously voted for representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

Search Interest

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External References