This week, House Republicans continued to struggle to identify and advance a new Speaker of the House following the surprising ouster of the former House Speaker last week. Since that time no clear contender has emerged after disagreement within the House Republican conference persisted this week.
House Republicans Struggle to Find Consensus on New Leadership
House Republicans continued to struggle this week to elect a new Speaker of the House. As shared previously, a group of House Republicans successfully removed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from this leadership role in recent weeks. Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has been serving in an acting capacity since that time. However, McHenry’s role is limited in scope and authority meaning that the House, and as a consequence much of Congress, is presently unable to advance and enact legislation. Last week, current Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) won an internal Republican conference vote to be the House Republicans’ new Speaker-designate. Yet, his nomination was short-lived lived and Scalise pulled out of consideration after it became apparent that he would not have the requisite support within his own party to win a formal vote for the Speakership on the House floor.
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), who was the runner-up in this earlier internal conference vote, has since been nominated by his party to be the new Speaker Designate — an informal first step that Republicans have taken to ensure that a candidate will have the necessary support to win the 217 votes necessary to become the next Speaker of the House. Since that time, however, Speaker-designate Jordan has lost two House-wide Speakership votes, and it remains unclear if he will be able to garner the necessary support within his conference to lead the chamber. A third vote was scheduled earlier today which resulted in Jordan losing additional support within the Republican conference. At the time of this writing, the situation remains extremely fluid.
Advance CTE is continuing to monitor this process closely and will continue to provide analysis on potential implications regarding federal funding and other issues of importance for the Career Technical Education community.
Steve Voytek, Policy Advisor