It was another stunning development in what has been a weeks-long devolution of the House Republican conference that started with a brutal fight over spending. Republicans narrowly avoided a catastrophic government shutdown, but Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s reliance on Democratic votes to pass a short-term spending bill led to his ouster as House speaker days later — a historic first. The House has been without a leader for the ensuing nine days. Scalise made it as the speaker nominee for less than 36 hours.
When he bowed out, Scalise did not back another candidate for speaker.
“I am sure there will be a lot of people that look at [running], but it’s got to be people that aren’t doing it for themselves and their own personal interests,” he said.
House Republicans’ failure to coalesce around a speaker has not only exposed their deep ideological divisions, but also their inability to govern as the majority party. Since eight Republicans voted to oust McCarthy as speaker last week, the House has remained at a complete standstill. It cannot consider any legislation to aid Israel in its war against Hamas — something many lawmakers in both parties want to provide — nor pass any appropriations bills to avoid a potential government shutdown in mid-November.
Scalise’s struggle to gain sufficient support from members who backed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) or neither candidate in the closed-door vote began to emerge late Wednesday evening, prompting some Republicans to begin laying the groundwork for an alternate candidate.
Scalise had spent the past two days talking to holdouts in conversations that went well, according to a person familiar with the talks who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings. On Thursday afternoon, he convened a conference meeting in the hope that he could persuade members to support him on the House floor. But after two hours behind closed doors, members came out admitting their conference remains so broken that no one, including Scalise, is close to garnering the necessary 217 Republican votes needed to win the speaker’s gavel.
Members leaving the meeting described it as “a therapy session” and a “struggle session,” and said Republicans had “wandered around the barn about 10 times” and holdouts were “being petty.” One member said they should bring a Festivus pole — a reference to a fictional “Seinfeld” holiday that requires an airing of grievances.
Hours later, Scalise announced his decision to remove himself from consideration.
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) had entered the noon meeting projecting confidence that Scalise could seal the deal after answering questions from more than a dozen Republicans who had concerns. But emerging hours later, Womack echoed colleagues, saying repeatedly that Scalise had no chance of winning with only Republican support.
He joined a chorus of Republicans who have begun to recognize that a Republican speaker may only be elected with Democratic support, if not by them voting outright for the Republican nominee then by voting “present” to lower the threshold of votes required to win a simple majority. Republicans have not approached Democratic leadership about a potential deal to elect a speaker.
“If they want the floor to be open again,” Womack said, “we’ve got to elect a speaker.”
Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) had been calling members of the conference to make his pitch for majority leader, but some Republicans were encouraging him to run for speaker instead if Scalise stepped aside, according to two lawmakers who have heard directly from Emmer. Multiple Republican aides familiar with Emmer’s conversations also confirmed that he will consider his options.
“I support Steve Scalise,” Emmer said earlier Thursday. “Nobody should want that job.”
Hard-line conservatives had been advocating for Emmer once efforts to remove McCarthy as speaker began to formalize late last month. Some Republicans said Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, is mulling a bid for speaker, too, after announcing he would run as a “policy-focused conservative majority leader” on Wednesday.
“All the focus right now should be on uniting around the Speaker-Designate who received the most support in Conference,” Hern said in a statement earlier Thursday, referencing his support for Scalise.
Some of the concerns people had with Scalise included his lack of a plan to fund the government, lingering anger that McCarthy lost the job, opposition to giving the next person in line to McCarthy a promotion, and making unrealistic promises to some members that others saw as a continuation of how McCarthy governed.
“In Washington, D.C., you make false friends and true enemies,” one House Republican said. “And Steve Scalise has made way too many of both.”
Womack said six other Republicans stood up in conference to say why they would never vote for Scalise.
Asked earlier Thursday whether Scalise should remain in the speakership race, Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), a McCarthy ally, said, “I think he needs to decide that as soon as he feels like he’s heard from every member from every possible angle.”
Several Republicans leaving a smaller meeting with Scalise on Thursday evening gave mixed reviews about whether he convinced some lawmakers. Rep. Keith Self (R-Tex.) left the office saying that his mind remained unchanged and that he would stick with Jordan, while Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) said that Scalise had picked up several votes. Representatives of all five ideological factions — informally known as the “five families” — also met with Scalise on Thursday afternoon and no resolution was reached about a path forward, according to a person familiar with the meetings.
Scalise had days to shore up support after the ouster of McCarthy, who had spent weeks working to garner support for his speaker bid after being elected speaker-designate two months before winning the gavel in January.
Jordan, who narrowly lost his internal bid among Republicans for speaker, is the only other candidate for speaker right now. But multiple aides and lawmakers say Jordan can’t get 217 Republican votes, either.
There also are growing calls from centrists, particularly from the Republican Governance Group, to extend the powers of Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) so that the House can begin to address critical pieces of legislation. But such a move is unprecedented and would require changing the House rules — and might need Democratic support to do so. Current rules state that the temporary position exists only to facilitate and oversee the election of a speaker.
“The world is on fire, and we need to address these problems,” said Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, who chairs the Republican Governance Group. “So it’s important that we get back to the business of running this country.”
McHenry demurred Thursday when asked if he would support an effort to give his temporary speaker position more power.
“There is a speaker designee, and he is being afforded the common courtesy of allowing him to put his votes together,” McHenry said, referring to Scalise before he had stepped aside. “And it’s a normal process in an extraordinary time.”
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate Republican, threw cold water on the idea by questioning whether it’s constitutional to empower McHenry. Instead, he suggested that willing Republicans should work with Democrats to elect a consensus speaker.
But asked whether hard-right Republicans support such a plan, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida bluntly said “no” and that many lawmakers would not allow that to happen.
“No, not going to worry about that right now,” he said about working with Democrats.
Many lawmakers remained angry at what they say was a serious lapse of judgment when Scalise worked to block a proposed conference rule change that would have kept House Republicans voting behind closed doors until a speaker nominee earned 217 votes. A vote on the proposed rule change failed in Wednesday’s meeting after Scalise and his allies whipped against the measure, knowing that tabling it would allow him to grab the nomination with a simple majority and betting that Republicans would simply coalesce around him.
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas who proposed the resolution that was backed by roughly 100 Republicans, called that bet a serious “mistake.”
Because there is now bad blood between Scalise and Jordan allies over how each group handled the outcome of the conference election, some Republicans noted that it is not guaranteed that Scalise’s supporters would move to Jordan’s camp.
“Jordan doesn’t have a path, either,” one Republican lawmaker said.
Moderate Republicans continue to feel it is particularly risky to vote for Jordan, who is closely aligned with former president Donald Trump. While members do not know what kind of policy prescriptions Jordan would make the House vote on, swing-district Republicans worry that his MAGA bona fides and name recognition nationally could negatively affect their reelection chances.
Trump endorsed Jordan for speaker but stayed uncharacteristically quiet this week as the conference met and ultimately nominated Scalise. On Thursday, Trump told Fox News that it seemed unlikely either Scalise or Jordan could get to 217 votes. He also expressed reservations over Scalise’s health, as the Louisiana Republican undergoes treatment for multiple myeloma.
“Steve is a man that is in serious trouble from the standpoint of his cancer,” Trump said. “I mean, he’s got to get better for himself. I’m not talking about even country now.”
Concerns about both Scalise’s and Jordan’s past controversies started to surface, too. Several swing-district Republicans expressed renewed concern after becoming aware that Scalise spoke at a white-supremacist rally in 2002 while serving as a state representative in Louisiana.
Jordan has been accused by several Ohio State wrestlers of knowing about sexual abuse allegations against the team’s doctor when he was a coach but doing nothing about it. An Ohio State independent investigation into the abuse did not make “conclusive determinations” about whether particular employees knew about the abuse by Richard Strauss, but a report issued later in 2019 said coaches did know.
Both Jordan and Scalise also voted against certifying the 2020 election of Joe Biden after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, but Republicans have not brought that up as a point of concern.
A crowded field for the speakership could also jeopardize Jordan’s efforts.
Some staunch conservatives consider Emmer to be a candidate who could unite Republicans because he has relationships across the conference’s ideological spectrum. Since he has served in leadership only this year, far-right members do not view Emmer as an establishment figure like McCarthy and Scalise. They also appreciate his bluntness, rather than what several members have described as McCarthy’s tendency to say what members want to hear. But others view Emmer, who has been in the House since 2015, as too inexperienced to be speaker.
Moderates in the conference, including those who represent swing districts that Biden won in 2020, like Emmer because he helped them get elected over the past two terms in which he served as the National Republican Campaign Committee chairman. Holding that post has also proved to members that he can raise money, a key void that needs to be filled after McCarthy, who is widely considered a master fundraiser.
Paul Kane, Jacqueline Alemany, Liz Goodwin and Amy B Wang contributed to this report.