Majority Leader Scalise Defeats Jordan in Battle for GOP Nomination for House Speaker

by  Nicholas Ballasy

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise defeated fellow GOP Congressman Jim Jordan on Wednesday in the speaker election before the House GOP conference, following the House vote to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from the speakership post.

The vote was 113-99.

The closed-door meeting where Scalise won the speaker nomination took place on Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Prior to the election for speaker, the House GOP conference considered a rule change that would increase the threshold needed to win the speaker nomination from a majority of the GOP conference to a simple majority of 217 votes. The change would likely have avoided the speaker vote on the House floor from going multiple rounds like it did in January with McCarthy’s nomination. The motion to raise the threshold was tabled at the meeting.

It is still unclear at this time when the House floor vote for speaker will take place. Scalise needs 217 votes on the House floor to become speaker, meaning the 99 who voted for Jordan would have to cross over and support him. Scalise would have to pick up another 5 votes from Republicans who chose a different candidate in the secret ballot obtained from voting.

Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, made their pitches and took questions at a candidate forum on Tuesday evening, which multiple GOP lawmakers had said didn’t yield a clear frontrunner. 

Now that Scalise has won the speaker nomination, both Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the current House majority whip, are in the running for House majority leader, according to a source close to the process. 

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Nicholas Ballasy has been breaking news for more than a decade in the nation’s capital and questioning political leaders about the most pressing issues facing the nation.