Jim Jordan falls short on 1st U.S. House Speaker ballot as 20 fellow Republicans vote against him
Combative right-wing lawmaker from Ohio is an ardent ally of Donald Trump
With files from CBC's Alex Panetta in Washington, D.C.
Combative right-wing Republican Jim Jordan failed to win a first vote on Tuesday to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, but more votes were expected to follow that could wear down his opponents.
The Ohio lawmaker backed by former president Donald Trump won 200 votes, short of the 217 needed to win the job, as 20 of his fellow Republicans voted against him. All 212 Democrats voted for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries.
The loss means that for now the House remains leaderless, as it has been since a handful of Republican hardliners engineered Kevin McCarthy's ouster as Speaker two weeks ago. That has left Congress unable to respond to wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, with just a month to go before the U.S. government faces another partial shutdown deadline.
Jordan said the next Speaker vote will be on Wednesday morning. It was not clear whether he would pick up more support or see his opposition grow. McCarthy never got less than 200 votes in 15 rounds over four days in January.
"Even Pope Francis, it took him five ballots to get elected," said Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis. "So let's just see how the rest of the day goes."
If Jordan prevails, a conservative who has spent years fighting with leaders of his own party could end up in one of the most powerful jobs in Washington, putting him second in line for the presidency behind the vice-president.
Republicans did not nominate another candidate, but that did not stop his opponents from voting for someone else. Many of them are moderates who represent politically competitive districts, while others specialize in negotiating the complex spending bills that keep the U.S. government running, deals that typically require a willingness to compromise.
Seven Republicans voted for Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican whose own bid for speaker fell apart last week, and six voted for McCarthy. Three Republicans voted for Lee Zeldin, who retired from Congress in January, while Republican Reps. Tom Cole, Tom Emmer, Thomas Massie and Mike Garcia got one vote each.
McCarthy and Scalise both voted for Jordan.
Four Republicans from the New York City area said they voted against Jordan because he opposed benefits for survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as well as tax policies and disaster aid that would help their residents.
Some Republicans who voted against Jordan said they didn't appreciate Jordan's brand of politics, which included an attempt to strong-arm them.
Pro-Trump party figures were enlisted to pressure lawmakers, even threatening primaries against those who failed to back Jordan.
At one point, a producer for Fox News host Sean Hannity sent the detractors a list of questions so aggressive they resembled a political attack more than a line of journalistic inquiry.
After the vote, Lori Chavez-DeRemer cited such behaviour as a reason she voted to deny Jordan the speakership. On Fox News, a hardcore conservative concurred.
"I think some of the pressure campaigns have backfired. They have not worked," said Byron Donalds, who voted for Jordan.
One conservative who voted against Jordan was a former prosecutor before entering politics.
Now a Trump critic, Ken Buck said he had a cordial conversation with Jordan but could not bring himself to vote for him for two reasons: Jordan's election denialism and his push to defund the Department of Justice and the special counsel investigating Trump.
After the vote, he told CNN he won't ever change his mind. He added that the combination of Trump as 2024 presidential candidate and Jordan as House speaker would cost Republicans control of Congress.
"There's no way we win the majority if the message we send to the American people is, 'We believe the election was stolen, and we believe Jan. 6 was OK – it was a tour of the Capitol,'" the Colorado Republican told CNN.
Narrow margin
Republicans control the House by a narrow 221-212 margin, giving them little room for error on divisive votes like this one.
After the vote, Jordan spent time talking with lawmakers who had voted against him on the House floor.
New Republican challengers could emerge if Jordan does not pick up support, including Emmer, the No. 3 House Republican, and Patrick McHenry, who is temporarily filling the Speaker's chair. Jeffries, the Democratic leader, has called for a bipartisan compromise.
Jordan's supporters say he would be an effective advocate for spending cuts and other Republican priorities in negotiations with Democratic President Joe Biden and the Senate, which is also controlled by Democrats.
"He is a patriot, an America First warrior who wins the toughest of fights," Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik said as she nominated Jordan for Speaker on the House floor.
Democrats have painted him as an extremist who would take orders from Trump. Jordan was a "significant player" in efforts to overturn Trump's 2020 election defeat, a congressional investigation found.
Jim Jordan is a MAGA extremist. <br><br>He led the fight to overturn the 2020 election, and now wants to criminalize abortion and slash Social Security and Medicare. <br><br>He’s unfit to lead the People’s House.<a href="https://t.co/OrurbTuG9V">pic.twitter.com/OrurbTuG9V</a>
—@HouseDemocratsDemocratic Rep. Pete Aguilar said on the House floor that Jordan's election would show the U.S.'s enemies that "the very people who seek to undermine democracy are rewarded with positions of immense power. We are talking about someone who has spent their entire career trying to hold our country back."
A fixture on conservative media outlets, Jordan has used his perch as chair of the House Judiciary Committee to help lead an impeachment inquiry into Biden that Democrats decry as baseless.
He helped found the House Freedom Caucus, which then-Speaker John Boehner dubbed "legislative terrorists" before members of that group pressured him to retire. Jordan was an architect of government shutdowns in 2013 and 2018.
Jordan had a more productive relationship with McCarthy, who was forced out by a small group of Republican insurgents.
Before entering politics, Jordan served as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University. Former students in 2018 accused him of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse of college wrestlers by the wrestling team's doctor. He denied those allegations and a university investigation found no hard evidence that he knew of the abuse.
With files from CBC's Alex Panetta