Oct. 18, 2023
House Republicans on Wednesday once again voted to reject the nomination of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to be the next speaker of the House.
Jordan lost a second vote in as many days as opposition to his nomination grew from 20 GOP defections to 22. It is unclear how Republicans will proceed as the House remains unable to conduct any business without an elected speaker. No more votes are scheduled for Wednesday, leaving the vacancy to drag on for yet another day.
The loss comes after Jordan spent the past 24 hours working behind closed doors to woo skeptics.
"We're working on it," Jordan told reporters ahead of the vote, even as it was clear that momentum for his effort to gain the gavel had shifted. After the vote, the House recessed as Republicans figure out the next step.
Oct. 17, 2023
The U.S. House is pausing to collect itself before launching into a second round of voting on its speaker.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, failed to win enough votes to be elected speaker on the first ballot Tuesday. The House is expected to meet again on Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET.
Jordan and his allies anticipated they could face more than one round of votes, and they are continuing to work to win over the Republicans who remain opposed to Jordan's leadership.
How the first round of votes went
Tuesday afternoon the House voted 200 to 232, with 20 Republicans voting against Jordan. Several members voted for previous candidates for the job, including former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
It was clear within the first 10 minutes of the lengthy and occasionally raucous vote that Jordan did not have the support to win the first round. Jordan will have to convince virtually every Republican to support him in order to win the gavel.
Every member of the House who was present in Washington was called to the chamber ahead of the vote. They filled nearly every seat, standing to occasionally cheer and jeer.
Members still supporting Scalise and McCarthy offered weak applause or cheers when fellow objectors voted against Jordan. But the biggest GOP applause came when Scalise and McCarthy stood to back the party's current nominee for the job.
The holdouts include members who objected to Jordan's record, those who fear Jordan could alienate voters in critical swing districts and some who remain angry that McCarthy was removed in the first place. A large share of the objections came from members on the Appropriations and Armed Services Committees — two groups who are deeply skeptical that Jordan will agree to basic governance tasks like funding the government or fulfilling military expenditure requests.
Members from those groups huddled in corners as they waited for the House clerk to officially end the first round of votes.
The vote followed a tense morning as members filed into the chamber. Jordan and his allies filed in and out of the official office for the speaker of the House still bearing a sign with McCarthy's name on it. The stately suite of offices has become a regular meeting place for Republicans in the past several weeks as they struggled to agree on a leader to unite them.
Tourists and guides cracked jokes as they passed the door that maybe Tuesday would finally be the day that the McCarthy sign came down. It appears it will stand another day.