Republicans nominate Steve Scalise for House speaker but struggle to unite to elect him

WASHINGTON —  Republicans nominated Rep. Steve Scalise on Wednesday to be the next House speaker but struggled to quickly unite their deeply divided majority and elect the conservative in a public floor vote after the historic ousting of Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the job.

In private balloting at the Capitol, House Republicans narrowly pushed aside Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the firebrand Judiciary Committee chairman, in favor of Scalise, the current majority leader. The Louisiana congressman, who is battling blood cancer, is seen as a hero to some after he survived being shot during a congressional baseball game practice in 2017.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Scalise said after his nomination.

A floor vote of the whole House was expected soon, but tensions were still running high among Republicans, who have brought the House to a standstill with bitter infighting since McCarthy’s stunning removal last week. The House was gaveled in for a brief session Wednesday, then broke indefinitely, with plans still clear as of early evening.

The House moved into its second week without a speaker during an extraordinary moment of political chaos, with crisis abroad as well as uncertainty at home. Just 10 months after Republicans swept to power in the House, aspiring to operate as a team and run government more like a business, the GOP majority has drifted far from that goal.

“We need to make sure we’re sending a message to people all throughout the world, that the House is open to doing the people’s business,” Scalise said.

It’s uncertain whether GOP lawmakers who supported Jordan, the hard-liner backed by former President Trump, will throw their support to Scalise in what is sure to be a close vote of the full House. Democrats are set to oppose the Republican nominee after easily nominating their leader, New York’s Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, for speaker.

Jordan said little after losing the Republican nomination, other than to note that the GOP majority “is divided.”

A centrist leader, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), said: “We do need to get a speaker in place so we can govern.”

“What we should have heard today after the vote count was, ‘I will heartily support Steve. Let’s get behind him,’” Bacon said. “We did not hear that.”

Americans are watching. A quarter of Republican voters in a recent survey approved of the decision by a small group of House Republicans to remove McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) as speaker. Three in 10 Republicans believe that was a mistake, according to the poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

At the White House, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “We want to see the chaos be done with so that we can deliver for the American people.”

The hard-right coalition of lawmakers that ousted McCarthy has shown what an oversize role a few lawmakers can have.

In a floor vote, Scalise would need to amass votes from almost all Republicans to overcome the Democratic opposition. Usually, the majority needed would be 218 votes, but there are currently two vacant seats, dropping the threshold to 217.

Many Republicans want to prevent the spectacle of a messy House floor fight like the grueling voting in January before McCarthy was finally elected speaker.

Behind closed doors, Republicans voted to set aside a proposed rule change that would have tried to ensure a majority vote before the nominee was presented for a full floor vote. Without the rules change, the Republican lawmakers would be expected to agree to a majority-wins process. But several lawmakers announced they were not supporting Scalise.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she had backed Jordan in the private ballot and would do so in the floor vote. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky said he had let Scalise know that he wouldn’t vote for him on the floor.

Neither Scalise nor Jordan had been seen as the heir apparent to McCarthy, who was removed as speaker in a push by Republicans’ far-right flank after he led Congress to approve legislation that averted a government shutdown.

All three men have been here before. They also vied for leadership in 2018, with McCarthy and Scalise extending the rivalry to this day.

As majority leader, Scalise was in line for the job, but faced a challenge from Jordan, a founding member of the far-right Freedom Caucus who was viewed as a more hard-edged option after McCarthy’s ouster.

Jordan is known for his close alliance with Trump, particularly when the then-president was working to overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump backed Jordan’s bid for the gavel.

Several House Republicans, including Florida’s Rep. Matt Gaetz, leader of the effort to oust McCarthy, said they would be willing to support either Scalise or Jordan.

“Long live Speaker Scalise,” Gaetz said after the vote to nominated him.

McCarthy had briefly floated a possible comeback earlier this week, but the eight hard-liners who helped Gaetz engineer his removal showed no signs of budging. The Californian told his colleagues late Tuesday not to put his name forward for a nomination.

At the speaker’s office, where McCarthy’s name has remained out front since his ouster last week, crews were seen carting boxes and artwork out of the stately suite in the Capitol.

For now, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who was named speaker pro tempore, is effectively in charge. He has shown little interest in expanding his power beyond the role he was assigned — an interim leader tasked with ensuring the election of the next speaker.

The role was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure the continuity of government. McHenry’s name was at the top of a list submitted by McCarthy when he became speaker in January.

Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.