House Speaker Race: Nine Republicans Vie for Leadership
Mary Margaret Olohan /
After over 20 days without a speaker of the House of Representatives, the GOP hopes this week to finally fill the vacancy. Nine Republicans are currently running for the position.
On Monday evening at 6:30 p.m., Republicans will hold a closed-door meeting in the Longworth House Office Building where they will listen to two-minute speeches from the nine candidates. In these speeches, each candidate will lay out his platform for why he would be the best choice for speaker.
On Tuesday, at 9 a.m., House Republicans will vote to choose their speaker nominee in a series of secret ballots. The candidates who win the smallest number of votes will be kicked out of the running as the votes go on.
Tom Emmer of Minnesota, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Byron Donalds of Florida, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Jack Bergman of Michigan, Austin Scott of Georgia, Pete Sessions of Texas, Gary Palmer of Alabama, and Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania have each announced that they will run for speaker.
The announcements came after Republicans underwent three rounds of voting on Jim Jordan of Ohio for speaker. Jordan lost all three rounds, and on Friday afternoon, House Republicans voted to remove him as the nominee for speaker.
It remains unclear whether any of these candidates can win the majority of the votes on the House floor.
“There’s only one person who can do it all the way,” joked former President Donald Trump of the speaker race. “Jesus Christ. If Jesus came down and said, ‘I want to be Speaker,’ He would do it. Other than that, I haven’t seen anybody who can guarantee it.”
Over the weekend, Mike Flood of Nebraska unveiled a “Unity Pledge” intended to rally Republicans to support the eventual designated speaker. That pledge emphasizes the importance of speedily electing a speaker “in order to return to work on behalf of the American people.”
“Electing the next Speaker of the House will require unity from House Republicans,” Flood said in a statement. “This pledge is a new effort to help our conference put our differences aside and come together. I’m urging all my colleagues to join this pledge so we can move forward with electing a Speaker and get on with the people’s business.”
Six of the speaker candidates have indicated support for the pledge: Bergman, Emmer, Hern, Johnson, Scott, and Sessions.
Only two of the candidates voted to certify the 2020 presidential election, according to Punchbowl News: Emmer and Scott. Johnson, Donalds, Hern, Bergman, Sessions, Palmer, and Meuser each voted against certifying the 2020 election.
Of all the candidates, only Emmer voted to codify same-sex marriage into law, the publication reported. He also voted to provide aid to Ukraine, as did Bergman, Scott, and Sessions.
Johnson, Bergman, Scott, and Meuser all voted for the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which conservatives criticized for failing to deliver substantive spending cuts.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had won the speaker position in January after 15 rounds of voting. The House ousted him from his leadership position on Oct. 3. Steve Scalise had won the Republican conference vote for nomination of the speaker over Jordan in early October, but he dropped out after a flurry of Republicans said they would not vote for him.
“This House of Representatives needs a speaker, and we need to open up the House again. But clearly, not everybody is there,” he said at the time, Fox News reported. “And they’re still schisms that have to get resolved. I never came here for a title I’ve had some great titles. I’m the Majority Leader of the House, and I love the job I have.”
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