The GOP Meltdown in the House of Representatives: How Do We Want to Prevent a Reionization of the White House?
Democrats, meanwhile, are relishing the prospect of a GOP meltdown on the floor. Sources say Democrats have been instructed by their leadership to show up and vote for anyone other than McCarthy on Tuesday, making the threshold he needs as high and difficult as possible. And if the speaker’s vote goes to multiple ballots, they are unlikely to help McCarthy if he tries to adjourn the proceedings to salvage his speakership bid.
There needs to be a “frank conversation” about who they election for the top job when multiple of their constituents question the wisdom of moving forward with that leadership.
Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who is a member of the Freedom Caucus, said it was a red line and not everyone in the caucus is against making that a hard line.
But the group’s push to extract concessions from McCarthy has exacerbated tensions inside the party. One senior GOP lawmaker said that they were a bunch of selfish, a**holes who wanted attention for themselves. They are trading effectiveness for warm support from their followers on social media.
Even House Republicans who are supporting McCarthy predicted that a number of lawmakers would run if McCarthy withdrew his name, with some saying that House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, McCarthy’s top deputy, would emerge as the front runner in that case.
CNN has yet to project which party will have control of the House of Representatives, though as of Friday morning, CNN has projected that Republicans have 211 seats to Democrats’ 198.
What will the first day of the House of Representatives tell us about the state of the Union and where does the rest of the country come from?
Norman said the group hopes to formalize a lengthier list of all the rules changes they are seeking. McCarthy does not plan to delay the internal leadership elections, but they are pushing for that to happen.
When asked whether McCarthy should get credit for delivering the majority, Norman responded: “The taxpayers that voted the representatives in deserve the credit.”
For McCarthy to get to 218, he needs to lose four GOP votes, which is the first time in 100 years that a party will have to vote multiple times for a chamber leader.
Gaetz said the C team shouldn’t start with only a slim majority. To attract more people to our policies we need to put our stars in a better position to shine.
Opening day in the House of Representatives is typically marked by the usual pageantry and the fleeting promise that this Congress will work better than the last. That hope could be immediately dashed this year if the House fails to elect a speaker on the first ballot and descends into a floor fight unprecedented in modern times.
When asked by Dana Bash on “State of the Union” whether she would make a decision about leadership before the elections, Pelosi said she hadn’t made up her mind.
Republicans are scheduled to hold a candidate forum on Monday evening, followed by leadership elections on Tuesday, November 15, according to a copy of the schedule shared with CNN.
But beginning with the first ballot for speaker on Tuesday, at least 19 Republicans voted for someone other than their party nominee, Kevin McCarthy of California. McCarthy was unable to become speaker because he didn’t have enough votes.
There will be leadership elections in the House on Wednesday, November 30. Voting will be done in secret using an app.
A candidate needs to win over at least 50% of those present and voting to be elected to any position in Democratic leadership. If more than two candidates run and no one wins a majority, the candidate with the lowest number of votes will be eliminated and the second round of voting will take place. That process continues until one candidate wins a majority.
A Protest Challenge to the House GOP Whip: Tom Emmer and Jeff Banks, Andrew Smallgs, Jim Banks and Drew Ferguson
A group of hardliners began discussing a protest challenge to McCarthy after the elections, in order to force him to negotiate during the House GOP leadership elections. They settled on GOP Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona.
Tom Emmer, the House GOP chairman, was seen as having the edge in the race for House GOP whip because he was expected to get a reward if Republicans win the majority.
Emmer told reporters that he did not know if a smaller majority would affect his bid. But his pitch to members is similar to McCarthy’s, saying: “we delivered.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, a Trump ally and the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, also officially declared his candidacy for the whip’s position. The current deputy whip, Drew Ferguson, is competing for the position because he believes his time on the team will be more valuable in a slimmer majority where the chief vote Counting job is crucial for governing.
Yes, of course. The California Democrat told Bash that people are campaigning, and that was a beautiful thing. I’m not asking anyone for anything. My members are asking me to consider doing that. But, again, let’s just get through the election.”
What do we want to see from a Democrat legislator? The case for a new caucus chair in South Carolina, Sen. Jonathon Hoyer
Currently, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer serves as the No. 2 House Democrat, in the role of House majority leader, and South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn serves in the role of House majority whip. Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark serves in the role of assistant Speaker and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries serves as House Democratic caucus chair.
Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, who currently serves as the co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has announced his run for caucus chair to replace Jeffries who is term limited.
Sean Patrick’s loss of reelection has created a race to lead the party’s campaign arm.
Democratic Rep. Tony Cardenas of California announced his race for the spot on Friday but others are being floated as well including Reps. Ami Bera and Sara Jacobs of California.
As a right-wing faction threatens to tank his speakership ambitions, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy delivered a promise: “I’ll never leave,” making clear he has no plans to drop out of the race even if the fight goes to many ballots on the floor.
We plan to vote for Kevin and let him fight it out. “We will not bend to their will, even if they think they’re going to use this to drive him out, that’s what they’re saying.”
If Kevin did take his name out, there would be good people running. GOP legislator said that it was likely that scraise would be the guy.
If McCarthy doesn’t get the votes, he would have to jump into the race, but didn’t say if he would.
He told CNN he was not going to get into speculation. “Obviously, our focus is on getting it resolved by January 3. There have been a lot of conversations with members who have expressed concerns.
The conservative who will become chair of the House Judiciary Committee went even further and said he wouldn’t jump in the race even if Gaetz and other hardliners wanted him to.
“I will vote for Andy for speaker, subject to what we’re discussing,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican after leaving a meeting in McCarthy’s office on Wednesday. He later added: “All this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. And you’ll see more of it.”
Along with those five, a group of seven GOP hardliners on Thursday laid out a list of demands that they needed to be met in order to vote for McCarthy.
So showing voters in 2024 that GOP governance addressed key problems like inflation and the economy will be important. McCarthy has announced he will form a select committee that will examine Chinas growing threat which could unite both parties, but his recent rhetoric has focused on a series of investigations of the Biden administration and conservatives desire to impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
And the anti-McCarthy group is also still pressing for a process that would allow any single member to hold a floor vote on ousting the sitting speaker, which was wielded over former Speaker John Boehner before he was forced out of the job by the far right in 2015.
The California Republican told his members that after weeks of discussions, he has agreed to a threshold which will allow them to vote to oust the speaker at any time. CNN first reported last week that he was supportive of that threshold.
David Joyce, an Ohio Republican, said that the idea that people are sick and tired of the noise is one of the reasons for not seeing a red wave. Wherever I go, I get the same question, why can’t you guys get things done?
A short-term fix that takes the issue into early next year could provoke a gargantuan showdown with the White House in the first days of GOP control of the House, with members firmly committed to slashing Biden’s spending plans and domestic agenda. Even though that would be a high risk for McCarthy that could backfire with a national electorate, setting up the possibility of such a confrontation might be one way to shore up his vote in the speakership campaign.
McCarthy has told his critics that if Democrats don’t unify, they could peel off some Republicans to make the next speaker a Democrat.
Some Democrats have said they would entertain the idea, including Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas who told CNN some of his GOP colleagues have approached him “informally” about it.
Joyce also said some members have reached out to him about potentially running, but he dismissed it. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker.”
Jeffries, the next House Democrat leader, said there are no conversations he has had with Republicans about putting up an alternative candidate. If McCarthy wasn’t able to get the votes, he wouldn’t rule out a scenario where his caucus would help elect the next speaker.
“Democrats are in the process of organizing the Democratic Conference,” Jeffries told CNN on Thursday. “Republicans are in the process of organizing the Republican Conference. Let’s see what happens on January 3.”
Some of the potential consensus picks that have been floated included retiring Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York, who both voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus; and Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran lawmaker and incoming head of the House Rules Committee.
But that would require agreement from every single Democrat and the help of five Republicans – no easy feat. Upton said he has no plans to be in Washington that day, telling CNN: “I’ll be skiing.”
But Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman said this has happened before – nearly a decade ago in his state where minority Democrats in the Arkansas legislature joined forces with a handful of Republicans to elect a GOP speaker of their choice. Westerman made this case to his colleagues in a closed-door meeting.
Reply to Comment on ‘The Case for Changing House Rules in Light of the Capitol Attack” by Donald W. Westerman, C. A. S. McCarthy, J. P. Crane, and
“I’m concerned about January 3 getting here and us not being able to form a Congress and organize committees and getting delayed in pushing the policy objectives that we want to push,” Westerman said.
The discussion over changing House rules is good for the party. But he added: “I’m not really excited about any type of destructive movement.”
If Mr. McCarthy does have a plan, he has not shared it with members of his leadership team, whom he has cut out of his deliberations about the speakership race in what some regard as a display of paranoia. Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist who is close to him, has been seen around the Capitol and RNC headquarters in recent days.
Mr. Norman, who has described himself as a “hard no” against Mr. McCarthy, declined to discuss his call with Mr. Trump, describing it as a “private conversation.” He said he was still undecided about whom he would support for speaker. Mr. Crane didn’t reply to requests for comment.
Nancy Pelosi stealthily picked off defectors who were willing to give her enough votes to win the speaker’s gavel. Ms. Pelosi, renowned for her ability to arm-twist and coax, won seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure, picked up another eight by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan legislating, and won over her sole would-be challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship for her.
The California Republican has already made a series of pledges in an effort to appease the right flank of his party. He traveled to the southern border and called on Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to resign or face potential impeachment proceedings. He promised Ms. Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments for making a series of violent and conspiratorial social media posts before she was elected, a plum spot on the Oversight Committee.
The congressman has promised to hold public hearings about the security failures that led to the Capitol attack. He has been quietly meeting with ultraconservative lawmakers in an effort to win them over. And on Monday night, he publicly encouraged his members to vote against the lame-duck spending bill to fund the government.
White House Speakership: The Rise and Fall of the Greene Conserve? The Case for a New Speaker after the GOP Takes over the House
If the GOP takes over the House after a poor showing in the elections it would mean a weakened governing mandate for any party at any time. It would make the majority more volatile because of the ideological struggle being waged by pro Donald Trump extremists inside the party.
But it also reflected Greene’s growing personal power, after she broke with some radical GOP members and lined up to support McCarthy’s speakership. After coming to Congress as a fringe figure, and quickly losing her committee assignments over her past retweets of violent rhetoric against Democrats, Greene now promises to be one of the most prominent faces of the new GOP majority. That she can make offensive comments to many people without fear of rebuke from her party’s leader says a lot about her position. And it also shows that while Trump’s power may be waning elsewhere after a lackluster launch of his 2024 campaign, his influence over his followers in the House, like Greene, remains strong.
McCarthy raised his voice and was animated as he teed off against his opponents and detailed concessions he has made, according to two sources. “I’ve earned this job,” he said.
But his struggle to lock in the speakership is more than an internal GOP fight and an inside-Washington brouhaha. If the House cannot pass spending bills, or if radical members of the Republican conference try to hold McCarthy hostage, the economic and social consequences could soon affect tens of millions of Americans. Government shutdowns and budget battles could hurt the US economy, military readiness and the dollar as a reserve currency.
This is one reason why the current year-end tussle over whether to fund the government for a full year – a bipartisan framework agreement for which was announced Tuesday night – or for just a few months is so critical since it could dump a fiscal crisis on the lap of a weak and easily manipulated new speaker next month.
Demeanors defending McCarthy’s apology for the latest outbursts at the White House: “I’m sorry to hear about the comments of the top Democrat, but I don’t think so”
McCarthy brushed off the questions about the latest inflammatory comments, saying that she thought she was being facetious. His attitude was not a surprise; it was consistent with his attempts to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, for which he briefly said Trump bore responsibility.
McCarthy was forced to choose between condemning the ex-president for meeting with a white supremacist at a dinner with a rapper who has made antisemitic statements or not condemning him at all. After meeting Biden and other congressional leaders last month, the House Republican leader falsely claimed that President Trump had denounced them four times when he hadn’t done so before.
CNN reported that McCarthy at the White House meeting said he would be open to a large bill. But while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell worked on such a measure Tuesday and declared it “broadly appealing,” McCarthy told his members that he was a “Hell no” on the measure.
The split raises the possibility that Republicans in the House and McConnell will be more conservative in their votes in the future, which could make it hard for some Republican senators to vote for a spending deal now.
McCarthy released the final rules package later that evening and also put out a “Dear Colleague” letter making one last pitch for the job, which included additional promises about how he’d govern as speaker – including ensuring that the GOP’s ideological groups are better represented on committees.
In a “Dear Colleague” letter from the California Republican, he made his case for the speakership and offered additional promises, including ensuring that the ideological groups are better represented on committees.
Not long after Sunday’s call, a group of nine hardliners – who had outlined their demands to McCarthy last month – put out a new letter saying some of the concessions he announced are insufficient and making clear they’re still not sold on him, though they did say progress is being made.
“Thus far, there continue to be missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties, and thus, no means to measure whether promises are kept or broken,” the members wrote in the letter obtained by CNN.
Speakership Bill No. 3: a Resolution to McCarthy’s Conservative Controversy on the Motion to Vacate Threshold
Some moderates – who fear the motion to vacate will be used as constant cudgel over McCarthy’s head – pushed back and expressed their frustration during the call, sources said.
Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota said he wasn’t happy with the low threshold McCarthy agreed to, though he indicated he would swallow it, but only if it helps McCarthy win the speakership. Other members made clear that the rules package that was negotiated will be off the table if McCarthy’s critics end up tanking his speakership bid.
McCarthy was pressed on whether this concession would win the 218 votes needed for him to get re-elected. McCarthy said on the call that people were moving in the right direction, though he did not directly answer.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida then repeated Diaz-Balart’s question, asking McCarthy to answer it. McCarthy told them they had two days to close the deal, according to sources.
Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York asked Gaetz if he would back McCarthy if he agreed to bring the motion to vacate threshold down to a single lawmaker, which is what it used to be before Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, changed the rules. If he was going to make that offer now, McCarthy would consider it, but he had not entertained that idea before.
A package released late Sunday includes allowing five Republicans to call for a vote on deposing the speaker, restoring the ability to eliminate a government officials salary, and creating a new select commit to investigative.
Lawmakers can force a bill to the floor if it has support from 218 lawmakers even though the rules package doesn’t change the discharge petition process.
The rules package prohibits remote hearings, does away with staffer unionization and gives the House Ethics Committee the power to take ethic complaints from the public.
The Story of Kevin McCarthy and the House Speaker’s Struggle: A Brief Observation from North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong on December 17, 2015
It wasn’t clear if Mr. McCarthy had a strategy for coming back from an embarrassment or how long it would take for Republicans to resolve their stalemate. His supporters suggested he was willing to drag out the process for some time, recognizing that his political career was on the line, after he tried and failed once before — in 2015 — to position himself for the speakership.
Even after McCarthy gave in to some of their most ardent demands, a group of 9 Republicans still made clear they were still not sold on the matter, despite his warning.
McCarthy is still working to seal the deal, with enough hardliners threatening to deny him the top job on Tuesday and his allies growing increasingly anxious that he is giving away his power for nothing.
We are preparing for a fight, to be honest. Not the way we want to start out, but we can’t really negotiate against the position of giving everything we ask for and not guaranteeing anything in return. Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, a member of the centrist-leaning Republican Governance Group, told CNN.
“I give Kevin a ton of credit. He’s brought everyone in and worked really hard to figure out a way forward. A way to make this place run better. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”
McCarthy used the week between Christmas and New Year’s to work the phones with both supporters and critics to try and find agreement on rules changes to get over holdouts.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/politics/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-struggle/index.html
The Game of Chicken: Why the GOP Senate isn’t Open to a Closer Look at a Republican Speaker: The Case Against McCarthy’s Opposition
He can only afford to lose four votes in the House of Representatives, with almost a dozen other GOP lawmakers publically saying they are not ready to oppose him.
They are still pushing for a single member to be able to call for a vote ousting the speaker, which used to be the case before Nancy Pelosi changed the rules, and they also want a commitment that leadership won’t play in primaries.
McCarthy put off all races until after the speaker vote. He said it was to allow freshman members to have input in the process, but other members believe it was a way to insulate himself from potential criticism from members who end up losing their races.
An aide to Norman said that his district offices in South Carolina had been flooded with calls from people who had received calls from someone who warned them that if McCarthy isn’t elected speaker, they could lose their jobs. Those campaigns, Norman’s aide told CNN, have done nothing to influence the congressman’s position, but it does reveal the lengths some McCarthy backers have gone to exert maximum pressure on detractors.
McCarthy and his defenders made pledges to each other during the holiday season that they wouldn’t allow a few people to control the conference.
McCarthy’s opposition has also been working in tandem and they are much more trained in playing hardball than the Freedom Caucus is.
The committee in charge of administrative matters sent a letter last week outlining the practical implications and pitfalls of a drawn-out speaker’s fight. The memo indicated that committees wouldn’t be able to pay staff without an approved House Rules package.
Student loan payments for committee staff could be frozen if a rules package isn’t adopted by mid-January, as was warned in the memo that was obtained by CNN.
If the battle over the next speaker causes the GOP majority to be paralyzed in their opening days, there will be severe penalties for rank-and-file staffers.
Even though the race is far from over, boxes from McCarthy’s office were spotted by CNN last week being moved into the speaker’s suite in a sign that he was committed to getting the job.
“It is a bizarre game of chicken where both sides have ripped the steering wheel off the dashboard and are just going pedal to the metal,” one member said of the ongoing standoff between pro- and anti-McCarthy factions.
In a New Year’s Day message, Pennsylvania GOP congressman Scott Perry said “nothing changes when nothing changes” after he signed onto a letter with other Republicans. The letter he cited said that the time is now for a “radical departure of the status quo” not a continuation of the past and ongoing Republican failures.
The House of Representatives is Not Open until a Speaker is Voted: Two Months of Scrambling for a Replacing Speaker
But nothing else can happen in the House of Representatives until a speaker is elected. It is the only leadership position in the constitution.
The Florida congressman nominated Jordan in the second round and he got 19 votes. Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who already voted twice against McCarthy, nominated Jordan for speaker in the third round.
Jordan is a close ally of former President Donald Trump. Jordan supported lawsuits to invalidate the election results and voted not to certify the electoral college results after Trump made claims of election fraud and Biden won the presidential election.
For now, McCarthy remains defiant in the face of opposition, with people close to him summing up his mentality as this: “We’re going to war,” a senior GOP source tells CNN. Never backing down.
But when a red wave never materialized in the November midterms, the razor-thin majority that resulted for Republicans empowered a small band of conservatives – long distrustful of McCarthy – to make demands.
What has unfolded over the last two months is an all-out scramble for the speakership, which has taken the form of strategy sessions with close allies on and off Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and non-stop phone calls with members.
The position is traditionally filled on the first day of a new Congress, followed by the swearing in of new members, but with the floor fight spilling into Wednesday, members-elect have yet to take the oath of office.
Incoming lawmakers arrived on the floor on Tuesday with their families in tow, expecting to pose for a photo and get started with their first day as lawmakers, but were instead greeted with a several-hour-wait as the speaker election went to multiple rounds of balloting – the first time that’s happened in 100 years.
In the meantime, the committee’s senior-most Republican who also served on the panel will be in charge, according to the letter sent last week.
Without fully functioning committees, there won’t be a lot of legislating, even if the bills are amended and approved. Republicans will have to wait before tackling some of their most pressing priorities, including investigations into President Joe Biden and his family.
The Senate president pro tempore is third in line. The first woman to hold that position was Sen. Patty Murray, who was elected on Tuesday.
The first four years of the GOP: Hillary Clinton’s legacy as secretary of state in the U.S. House during the Benghazi scandal
“Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House isn’t someone who has sold shares of themself for more than a decade to get it,” Matt Gaetz, the hard-right Florida congressman, said on the House floor before nominating Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for speaker before a second round of voting Tuesday.
House precedent says members should vote until the majority is in place. But until Tuesday, the House had not failed to elect a speaker on the first roll-call vote since 1923, when the election stretched for nine ballots.
The rise of anti-establishment intransigence within the GOP can be traced back to the Tea Party, and it was put on a steroids by the rise of Donald Trumpism.
In 2010, Republicans rode the Tea Party wave to win control of the House, but the cost was steep. Fights over raising the debt ceiling – something that had been routine and protected U.S. credit – and five years of an inability to get much of anything done, even with each other, frustrated John Boehner as speaker.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy said on Fox News. A select committee and a special committee were put together. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”
The ostensible reason for the GOP-led Benghazi investigation was to find out what happened in an attack on an American embassy in Libya, where four people died – not to hurt Clinton. But Clinton, who was secretary of state in the Obama administration, was the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
Why McCarthy didn’t cry: Why he tried to play tough guy, but couldn’t stop blaming Trump in his misfortune
That’s why McCarthy didn’t believe he could stick to his criticism of Trump after Jan. 6, heading down to Trump’s Florida home just weeks after the insurrection and posed for a photo with him.
Trump maintained his power with the base and endorsed scores of candidates in the 2022 midterms. They did well in primaries, but lost in swing districts.
At the 11th hour, he tried to play tough guy, threatening the defectors with stripping them of committee assignments. That appeared to have the reverse effect of what he and his allies were intending.
There is a question about how hard Trump tried. On the day of the vote, and in the days leading up to it, he hasn’t posted anything on his social media platform to boost McCarthy.
The question now is – not just for McCarthy but for anyone with ambition and has to make choices between what they believe and what they’re willing to compromise – was it worth it?
At the end of the day, the job of speaker isn’t supposed to be about one person’s ambition but what they can get done to fix problems in the country, and this is taking place at a time when people are already cynical about the intentions of politicians in Washington and what they are trying to accomplish.
For all the talk in Washington of “Dems in disarray,” this is again another example of the chaos that continues to surround House Republicans. How can they govern with a four-seat majority if they are going through all this to pick a leader?
The New York Democrat will almost certainly lead the minority party, once the prolonged floor fight for House speaker comes to a conclusion. He would succeed Nancy Pelosi, who served as speaker in the prior session of Congress when Democrats were in the majority. In addition to being the first Black lawmaker to attain such a position, he also would be the first person voted to lead House Democrats to be born after the end of World War II.
A Conversation with Jeffries during his Second Legislative Term During the Presidency of Donald J. Trump in Brooklyn and Queens
Jeffries was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied political science at the State University of New York at Binghamton and received a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University. He attended the law school at New York University School of Law, where he was on the law review.
He started his career in politics after being elected to the New York State Assembly in 2006. He was elected to the 8th congressional district, which includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens.
During his time in Congress, Jeffries has pushed for policing reform, including a national ban on chokeholds following the death of Eric Garner, a Black man who died in 2014 after being held in the restraining move. He was also instrumental in the passage of the First Step Act and co-sponsored the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that passed the House but failed in the Senate.
In 2019, he became chairman of the Democratic caucus, making him the youngest member serving in leadership. Jeffries was one of a few lawmakers who were impeachment managers during the trial of Donald Trump.
Jeffries, who was first elected in 2012 and will be running for a sixth term in 2024, will attempt to restore the enhanced child tax credit, get his party back to the majority and rebuild economic access.
He told CNN last month that he was looking forward to the chance to do the best for the greatest number of people as long as he could operate at the highest level.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/04/politics/hakeem-jeffries-history-first-black-party-leader/index.html
The Story of Nathaniel P. Banks: A Stranger Candidate for the Post-Slaved Speaker’s Race
Jeffries climbing up to become one of the highest-ranking Black politicians in America comes at a time when a record number of Black people are in Congress. They will make decisions in a building where the foundation was laid by slaves.
Thomas Balcerski is the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. history at Occidental College and has been for a number of years. He is the author of “Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King” (Oxford University Press). He talks about president history on his phone. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.
What does this long, strange history of contested speaker elections tell us about today’s divides? The issue of the extension of slavery in the territories was one of the main issues that divided the two major parties. While Republicans did not get their first choice for speaker, they nevertheless selected a member of their own party and lived to fight another day against the Slave Power.
In either instance, a compromise of some sort – whether by choosing a new candidate for speaker or by placating the splinter faction in some significant way – has usually been the result. If history is any guide, we may once again be living a version of one of these two scenarios.
The speaker’s race was the most serious challenge yet. The compromise candidate was found in Nathaniel P Banks, a member of the nativist American Party and a Democrat. After 133 votes were cast and held over two months, Banks became speaker and defeated his opponent, who had hoped for a plurality resolution to capture votes of competing groups. Banks eventually defeated Aiken on February 2, 1856.
An emergency meeting was held between the Republican majority leader Nicholas LongWORTH of Ohio and the radical group that represented John M. Nelson ofWisconsin, for which there were eight votes. Gillett became speaker after the House agreed to a number of procedural reforms.
The Democratic nominee received 195 votes and two other Republicans got 23 votes on the first ballot. Theodore Roosevelt used the term “progressives” in 1912 to describe a group of his party members who wanted to run for president.
Republicans in the House could face a similar set of calculations. A large majority of Republicans want McCarthy, who has been a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, but if the prolonged battles of the 1850s are any guide, they would do better to select someone who is acceptable to the entirety of their caucus. They could prolong the balloting for days, weeks or even months.
Although politics have changed, dynamics are still the same as they were in 1923. Today, a vocal conservative minority is trying to assert its power within the Republican majority and possibly emerge stronger for it. This fringe group may be dissatisfied with McCarthy, but they have to decide if they would rather achieve their goals under Republican leadership than remain irreconcilable.
But on Wednesday, after the House reconvened, Mr. McCarthy lost a fourth ballot on the same margins as the third, with 20 defectors this time throwing their support behind Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, the first Black man ever to be nominated by Republicans for the job. Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana, who had previously supported Mr. McCarthy, voted “present,” a move that deprived him of a badly needed vote but impeded him less than had she voted for another lawmaker.
The fourth-ballot vote signaled that Republicans were far from breaking the deadlock that has paralyzed the chamber, even after a direct appeal from former President Donald J. Trump, who had endorsed Mr. McCarthy but stayed silent on Tuesday throughout his humiliating series of defeats on the House floor.
The endorsement did not move any defector towards Mr. McCarthy. The Republican leader and his allies were attempting to get the votes of some of their supporters as the votes were being counted.
The start of Republican rule was ruined by an instruement of ultraconservative legislators who for weeks have held fast to their vow to oppose Mr. McCarthy.
Every member of each party was expected to vote for the nominee for speaker. 50 years after World War II, there was no stray vote for anyone other than the two major party nominees.
Insights from the 118th and the 68th Congresses: The Fate of Gillett and Coolidge
Still, a distant mirror can show us things, and even across 10 decades of profound change, there are parallels between this week’s meltdown at the outset of the 118th Congress and the fiasco that occurred in the 68th.
The party was left with majority control despite the disappointing results of the latest elections. That created anxiety and also caused internal disputes over rules and procedures, which included the powers of individual committee chairs.
No nominee in either case had been particularly controversial. The survivors of previous leadership upheavals were generally compatible with the party’s broad rank and file.
But having reached the top of the leadership ladder, these men represented a party establishment regarded with hostility by a potent faction of the party. They were the embodiment of that group’s grievances.
Gillett was a 72-year-old Boston Brahmin with a Harvard law degree who was serving his 15th term in the House. He had first grasped the big gavel years earlier, after Republicans seized the House majority in the 1918 midterms the month World War I ended.
The same postwar wave that swept Warren G. Harding into the White House gave Gillett’s party a huge majority two years later. The party of Lincoln was gaining ground in the country and having an effect on everything from Washington to the White House.
But the brief era of the Harding administration stalled the party’s momentum. The economy was still recovering from its postwar recession and labor unrest was widespread, including major strikes by coal miners and railroad workers.
The House was criticized by the public in 1921 and 1922 for refusing to accept the Census of 1920. That study documented how immigration had exploded and, for the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas than rural.
These controversies, coupled with the typical swing of the midterm political mood led to Harding’s GOP losing 75 House seats and a net of 6 Senate seats in 1922. It was a worse shellacking than Barack Obama or any other president of the past four decades would experience in his first midterm.
The 68th Congress was officially in office as of March 1923, but Gillett and his House leadership team did not convene its first session until late that fall. Calvin Coolidge became president after the death of his brother, Presidents Calvin Coolidge and John F. Roosevelt. The vote for the speaker was supposed to start in December.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146841362/house-speaker-vote-struggle-100-years-explainer
The First Test of McCarthy’s Strategy for Changing the House Rules: Henry A. Cooper and the Legacy of a Founding Father of the United States
With a majority barely larger than Republicans have now, Gillett found it more difficult to corral the factions within his party. He received only a fraction of the votes that McCarthy got in his first test this week.
Seventeen House members who identified as progressives (The New York Times called them “radical progressives”) would cast their first-round speaker votes for Henry A. Cooper of Wisconsin. A former prosecuting attorney from Racine who represented southeastern Wisconsin from 1893 to 1919 and again from 1921 to 1931 died in 1931. Cooper paid a price for opposing the entry of the U.S. into World War I.
Cooper, whose parents had operated a station on the Underground Railroad by which escaped slaves reached freedom, was a longtime ally of Wisconsin’s legendary progressive governor and Sen. Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette. When Cooper was opposing Gillett in the House, LaFollette was conducting a smaller-scale revolt against the GOP leaders in the Senate.
Ultimately, however, Gillett survived. Although the voting continued for days, no clear alternative emerged with any chance of getting a majority. Nicholas Longworth of Ohio helped him win over the Cooper voters. Longworth was able to convince the progressives that there would be procedural reforms and that he was Gillett’s heir apparent.
This may be a good model for McCarthy’s strategy because of how people vote, wait and vote again. Some of the less passionate members might drift away as the hour grew late or the weekend neared, because of many votes and ballots.
McCarthy’s critics were motivated by the decentralization of authority in the chamber. They want less reliance on the leadership and more empowerment of the committee chairs.
They also wanted a rule change that would facilitate the use of a rather obscure item of House floor procedure known as “a motion to vacate the chair.” That provision allows a sufficient number of members to demand a vote on the presiding officer, a threat to replace the speaker.
At the height of his power, Cannon not only chose all the committee chairs, he chose all the members of all the committees. He decided which bills would be allowed on the floor and which members would be allowed to speak.
A person inquiring about the House rules in that era received an envelope that only had a picture of Joe Cannon.
The bipartisan majority needed to be put together when Cannon’s high-handed practices became intolerable. Cannon remained Speaker speaker but stripped of most of his powers. Defeated in the 1912 election, he returned two years later and served again as a rank-and-file Republican.
The Cannon House Office Building is the first structure on the Hill which bears a person’s name. It is a monument to both the speakership and power.