Rep. Jordan and the Main Street Group: From a Fractal Forum on Capitol Hill to the Epicenter of the House GOP Warfare

Representative Jim Jordan made his way to a candidate forum with House Republicans to hear from members running for U.S. Speaker of House in the Longworth House Office Building on Wednesday.

Representative Erin Houchin, a first-term Republican from Indiana, was chosen as the poster child for the new House G.O.P. in the opening months of the 118th Congress, promoted by leaders as a fresh, friendly and broadly appealing face for their party.

On Wednesday, a slim majority of House Republicans nominated the Louisiana congressman as their choice to be the next speaker. His nomination was a close one as Jim Jordan’s bid was endorsed by President Donald Trump.

She is part of a group of lawmakers who view themselves as pragmatic centrists, but who are now lining up behind Mr. Jordan, whose right-wing bent, combative style and close alliance with former President Donald J. Trump have little in common with them.

The vice-chair of the group, who is from Oklahoma, has not publicly said who she is backing. But they pushed unsuccessfully for a rule change that would have made it more difficult for Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican who is viewed as the more traditional choice to succeed Mr. McCarthy, to prevail over Mr. Jordan in the race.

They are also close friends of Mr. McCarthy. As members of the Main Street group, their stated purpose is “to develop common sense, pragmatic legislation and promote kitchen-table policies in Congress.” Mr. Jordan was branded by former Republican Speaker John A. Boehner as a “legislative terrorist,” but forged a deal with Mr. McCarthy that moved him from the fringe to the epicenter of politics on the Hill.

This strange alignment is the ultimate reflection of how much of what happens on Capitol Hill is dictated more by what clique you belong to — and who you or your friends have a personal beef with — than where you sit on the ideological spectrum.

The candidates themselves were both presenting themselves on Wednesday as men who could unite their fractious conference, and move beyond the personal pique that has come to define much of the Republican-on-Republican warfare in the House.

According to Mr. Jordan, he would back the Louisianian only if the Republicans voted unanimously for him, something that is currently required under party rules. Mr. Jordan’s allies tried to change these rules and raise the threshold, which would make it more difficult for Mr. Scalise to prevail. But the conference voted 135-88 on Wednesday morning against the rule change.

The challenge of unifying the rowdy conference that just ousted Kevin McCarthy as House speaker has been one of the biggest challenges for Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who has served in House Republican leadership for nearly a decade.

If elected, he would be the first speaker from the South in over a decade. He would also be the first House speaker from Louisiana in the nation’s history. That could bring more attention to important issues in the Southern Gulf, such as hurricanes and flood protection. For years, Scalise has worked to preserve federal flood insurance, and he’s pushed back against insurance rate hikes, which are set by a program that operates under FEMA.

Port Fourchon is one of the nation’s largest oil and gas seaports and it supplies one-sixth of the nation’s oil supply. A supporter of onshore and offshore drilling, Scalise celebrated the House passage of H.R. 1 earlier this year, a GOP-backed energy bill, arguing it would increase U.S. energy production and lower costs for consumers. The White House threatened to veto the bill because it would help big companies skirt the Clean Air Act, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the bill was dead on arrival.

But in a letter sent earlier this month to his GOP colleagues asking for their vote to nominate him as speaker, Scalise touted the bill’s House passage as an example of his priorities and leadership style.

“I have a proven track record of bringing together the diverse array of viewpoints within our Conference to build consensus where others thought it impossible,” he stated in the letter.

During that time, he spoke as a guest to the European-American Unity and Rights Organization — a white supremacy group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. The incident came back to haunt Scalise in Congress. He eventually apologized for ever speaking to the group, saying he wasn’t aware of its controversial history.

His time with the group, and his adjacent association with Duke, has been dredged up again as he looks to move into the No. 1 role in the House. In one column that has received new attention on X, formerly known as Twitter, Louisiana politics writer Stephanie Grace recalls a young Scalise describing himself as “David Duke without the baggage.”

Grace stated that Duke was from Louisiana just like Scalise in an interview about her column. At the time Scalise made that comment in the ’90s, Grace noted that Duke had recently lost in a runoff to be Louisiana’s governor and said Scalise’s comment was likely reflective of his effort to appeal to a conservative voter group that supported Duke.

Grace, who supports Scalise’s bid for speaker, characterizes him as a “conservative guy” who supports a lot of mainstream conservative policy, including opposition to affirmative action and efforts to keep same-sex marriage illegal.

Scalise’s relationship with Cedric Richmond, a former Democratic Congressman from New Orleans, is often cited as an example of this bipartisanship. Richmond and Scalise served in the Louisiana Legislature and in Congress together and have often been called “the bayou brothers.” A senior advisor for the Democratic National Committee, Richmond declined to comment for this story. But when Scalise was previously criticized for talking to a white supremacy group, Richmond defended Scalise, saying he doesn’t have a “racist bone in his body.”

But no matter what happens, Scalise is not new to adversity. The congressman was shot at a baseball practice in Alexandria, Va., two years ago. He drew upon that experience in his letter to colleagues asking for their support of his nomination saying, “I firmly believe this Conference is a family. When I was shot in 2017, it was Members of this Conference who saved my life on that field. … When I was in the hospital for nearly 15 weeks, it was the possibility of getting back to work with all of you that kept me motivated to get better.”

In August, he was diagnosed with a form of blood cancer. He stated that the cancer had dropped dramatically thanks to treatment.