WASHINGTON—Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) claimed “good progress” late tonight in his long-running, often fractious negotiations with dissident populist conservatives who oppose his bid to become Speaker of the House.
Leaving the negotiating room in the Capitol, McCarthy told reporters that he thinks “it’s probably best that people keep working tonight. I don’t think voting tonight does any good but a vote in the future will.”
Asked if he has reached a deal with his opponents, McCarthy responded, “We don’t have a deal yet but we’re making a lot of progress.” The House then voted 216–214 to adjourn for the night and is expected to return Thursday at noon. Four Republicans opposed the motion to adjourn and two did not vote.
If the deal is completed on Thursday, it is expected to result in McCarthy being elected Speaker, succeeding Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, who ran the House in the preceding Congress.
McCarthy’s departure from the negotiations and statement to reporters came after a related agreement was reached between the Congressional Leadership Foundation (CLF), a political action committee (PAC) aligned with the California Republican; and the Club for Growth (CFG).
The CFG is a conservative PAC that has helped elect dozens of the most conservative Republicans in both the Senate and the House in recent years. Former Indiana Republican Rep. David McIntosh leads the CFG.
The agreement between the PACs reflects the anger sparked among the dissident populist conservatives during the 2022 midterm campaigns when the CLF supported Rep.-elect Morgan Luttrell in a bitterly contested Texas primary against a CFG-backed candidate.
“This agreement … fulfills a major concern we have pressed for. We understand that Leader McCarthy and Members are working on a rules agreement that will meet the principles we have set out previously. Assuming these principles are met, Club for Growth will support Kevin McCarthy for Speaker,” McIntosh said in a statement.
The back room bargaining and close adjournment vote capped off a day that saw McCarthy lose three more House votes on the Speaker choice after he failed on three ballots on Tuesday. The last time more than one vote was required to elect a speaker was in 1923, when nine ballots were required.
McCarthy received on the sixth ballot the same number of votes, 201, that he got in the day’s two other roll calls. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also received the votes of all the chamber’s 212 Democrats on every ballot taken so far. Jeffries will serve as House minority leader in 2023.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.)—the favorite of McCarthy’s Republican opponents—received 20 votes in each of the three votes as well. Donalds told Fox News shortly after the sixth vote that he thinks McCarthy may yet find the path to victory.
McCarthy’s three losses on Jan. 4 in his effort to gain enough votes to succeed Pelosi came despite a strong endorsement on Jan. 3 by former President Donald Trump.
Trump’s endorsement was published late on Jan. 4 on his Truth Social digital media platform, saying, “Some really good conversations took place last night, and it’s now time for all of our GREAT Republican House Members to VOTE FOR KEVIN” and “CLOSE THE DEAL.”
Trump said it was time for House Republicans to unite behind McCarthy, who led the Republicans in retaking the House majority in the 2022 midterm elections and avoid turning a “GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT.”
But Trump’s words failed to change any minds among the 20 dissidents who remained united against McCarthy despite increasingly harsh criticism from former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas governor and 2016 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), and others.
There had been talk in the hours before the fourth ballot of Republican leaders moving for adjournment immediately after the Jan. 4 session began, but the motion wasn’t offered. It was widely reported before the session that Democrats were solidly opposed to the adjournment and that a handful of moderate Republicans could join them to defeat the motion.
In nominating Donalds, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) emphasized that “there’s an important reason for nominating Byron and that is this country needs a change. This country needs leadership that does not reflect this city, this town that is badly broken. House of Representatives is the people’s house.”
“Do you think that the American people want us to continue down the road of what we’ve been doing?“ Roy asked his colleagues. ”Do they want us to continue to do the things since the leadership that’s currently in place doesn’t have a plan in place? Do you think they want us to continue down that path?
“And the argument that I would make is that they want a new face, new Vision, new leadership, and I believe that base vision and new leadership is Byron Donalds, and I’m proud to put his name into nomination.”
McCarthy’s nomination was delivered by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.).
“Last night people were frustrated,“ Gallagher said. ”They wanted to go to parties; they want to take pictures with their families. But honestly, we find ourselves here in this chamber for the second day. We know we’ve got work to do, but in some ways, there’s no place I'd rather be.
“Yesterday, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle were tweeting bags of popcorn that they had out of it. The starting point is palpable. But I think my friends on the Democratic side misunderstand what’s happening here. Sure, it looks messy. But democracy is messy by design.
“That’s a feature, not a bug, of our system. We air it all out in the open for the American people to see because, at the end of the day, the president is not in charge, the Supreme Court is not in charge, speaker of the house is not even in charge. The American people are in charge.”
McCarthy and Jeffries received virtually the same number of votes on all ballots. The shifts were between anti-McCarthy members: firstly Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz) who at one stage received 10 votes, and then Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) who received 19 votes ahead of the vote for Donalds.
Jan. 4’s opening vote capped a continuation of what has been a frenzied two days of back-room bargaining and media posturing by McCarthy and his supporters, as well as the dissident populist conservatives.
The dissidents demanded and got from McCarthy a host of reform concessions, but their fundamental distrust of the California Republican kept them in the negative column.
The bottom line for the dissidents is that they just don’t believe that McCarthy would be the agent of change they believe must lead the House in what they’re determined to make the last two years of President Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House.
“I came to a broken and dysfunctional Congress to change it. Advancing the long-standing pecking order one notch has no prospect of doing that. Many don’t want to change it,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) posted on Twitter just before the first vote.
“Kevin McCarthy is not the right candidate to be Speaker. He has perpetuated the Washington status quo that makes this body one of the most unsuccessful and unpopular institutions in the country. This is not about personality or who has ‘earned’ the position, it is about serving the American people. I will not support the status quo.”
One of the dissidents, newly elected Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), told a local media outlet that he opposes McCarthy because he thinks House Republicans must stand up against excessive federal spending as seen in the $1.8 trillion Omnibus spending bill adopted just before Christmas.
