It’s been a century since the United States House of Representatives last failed to choose a speaker on the first attempt.
On Thursday, the Republican-led House were trying again to choose a presiding officer after front-runner Kevin McCarthy failed to win the position on multiple rounds of voting over two days. Yet the Republican leader continued to lose, surpassing the number it took to break the last impasse 100 years ago with a defeat on the ninth ballot — the third vote of the day.
An historic 10th and 11th vote also did not see a change to McCarthy’s fortunes, sending him into the longest protracted speaker’s battle since before the Civil War. The House will try again when it reconvenes Friday afternoon.
McCarthy’s path to the speakership has been blocked by a fraction of Republican party members, some of whom have voiced their displeasure with him. As a result, House business is on hold until a speaker is chosen.
“It’s been described as a circus,” said Todd Belt, professor and director of political management at George Washington University.
“This is the only branch of government that they (Republicans) control right now, and if they can’t seem to get their act together on this, they’re sending a real strong signal to the American people that they may not be able to govern in the future.”
Who is Kevin McCarthy?
McCarthy, 57, a California congressman, is a high-ranking Republican official. After being elected in 2006, he became chief deputy whip and later served as majority whip. In 2014, he was elected Republican leader in the House, his website states.
He has eyed the speaker’s gavel before — in 2015 — but dropped out because he could not win over conservatives.
After the Republicans secured a slim majority in the House following the 2022 midterms, McCarthy was seen as the successor to Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who held the speaker role previously.
Despite his rise in the Republican ranks — and securing an endorsement from former president Donald Trump — McCarthy hasn’t won over all his conservative colleagues, said Josh Huder, a senior fellow with the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University.
“There’s been a lot of tension between conservatives in the caucus and leadership for a very long time,” he told Global News.
“What we’re seeing is some combination of longstanding disputes between conservatives in the Republican Party and their leadership, and some sort of personal agitation between conservatives and Mr. McCarthy, kind of come to the fore and prevent him from getting the nomination.”
Why does he keep failing in votes to become speaker?
The speaker votes have produced almost the same outcome with 20 Republican holdouts still refusing to support McCarthy, leaving him short of the 218 needed to win the gavel.
Typically, the election of a speaker is a “pro forma event,” Huder said. Any issues are sorted out behind closed doors before the first House sitting to get the speaker elected on the first ballot and representatives sworn in.
Not since 1923 has a speaker’s election gone to multiple ballots, so the fact those issues haven’t been sorted out yet is “not something normal in modern times,” he added.
“You have to look back to before the Civil War when it was far more routine to do that, but since the Civil War, it’s more or less been ironed out behind the scenes,” Huder said.
“You don’t see the sort of public fracture of political parties too frequently.”
The Republicans who are holding out are not “Trump loyalists,” said Belt, evident by the fact Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy didn’t move the needle in his quest for the speakership.
“What is different about them is they see McCarthy as being a product of the insider Washington culture or as they like to call it, ‘the swamp,’” he said.
“They think that he doesn’t have the real backbone to stick with them and be principled in supporting the types of policies that they want to see.”
What makes the group of holdouts complicated is that they all want different things, Huder added.
“There’s a group of them that want some rule changes to the way that the House works so that conservatives have more power in the decision-making apparatus. There are some that are looking for committee representation — better representation of conservatives on really important committees within the House of Representatives,” he said.
“There are others that just don’t like Mr. McCarthy personally and believe that they just need a new leader, so how exactly you win over this entire group of 20 that are holding out is yet to be seen.”
How can the deadlock be broken?
After a third long day for the House on Thursday, members narrowly voted to reconvene at noon on Friday, which is the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The delay in electing a speaker shows the world the “United States just doesn’t have its house in order,” Belt said. The reason why so many votes are taking place is that McCarthy is persistent in seeking the job.
For the deadlock to break, Belt said McCarthy may have to step aside, make enough deals with the holdouts to get their votes, or get enough of his supporters to vote present, which would lower the threshold for the speakership. That would give the Democrat’s Hakeem Jeffries the gavel.
“This is a threat that is, ‘I’ll go down myself with the ship if you don’t vote for me,’” he said.
“That’s very risky, so I doubt he’ll try that.”
On Thursday morning, reports from CNN and the Washington Post emerged indicating that McCarthy had given in to a number of demands made by the holdouts, including the most controversial — lowering the required threshold for the number of members to force a vote on ousting the speaker to one from five.
By Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that a deal was closer, after five rounds of voting saw McCarthy’s numbers remain the same. The report said a potential deal could finally break the stalemate.
“If 10 break, if 12 break, then all of a sudden you could see more momentum for Mr. McCarthy. The remaining holdouts would have immense pressure from their colleagues to either negotiate their way out, or cave and finally back the speaker given everything that he’s given them over the past 48 hours,” Huder said.
“Today is going to be a fascinating time to watch the House of Representatives because we’re really going to know whether Mr. McCarthy’s negotiations with conservatives have paid off, or whether new nominees are going to make their way to the floor.”
— with files from the Associated Press