House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is gaining momentum as he tries to lock down support for the Speakership, but opposition remains.
Jordan scored key pickups on Monday when four Republicans who had previously publicly opposed him flipped their votes: House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (Ala.) along with Reps. Ann Wagner (Mo.), Ken Calvert (Calif.) and Vern Buchanan (Fla.).
But at least six Republicans say they plan to vote against the fast-talking, hard-line Ohio Republican — enough to keep him from winning the gavel if all members of the House vote.
At the same time, the crisis in Israel has not abated, and the U.S. is barreling toward its next shutdown deadline — all while the House closes in on two weeks without a Speaker.
Follow along for live updates below.
House Republicans left a Monday evening GOP conference meeting making clear that while members have moved in Jordan’s favor since Friday, enough holdouts remain to deny him the Speakership on the first floor vote on Tuesday.
Jordan can only afford to lose four GOP votes and still reach 217 — the majority number needed to win on the floor, assuming all members are present and voting for a candidate. But more than that say they are against him.
- Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.): Bacon said he is “opposed” to Jordan, but not “never, never”
- Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.): Planning to vote for Scalise, who won the GOP Speaker nomination last week before withdrawing a day later.
- Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.): Voting for McCarthy
- Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.): Planning to vote for McCarthy
- Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.): Planning to vote for Scalise on at least the first ballot
- Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.): Said “I am a no” on Jordan “right now” but they are meeting tonight
- Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa): When asked if she knows how she wants to vote on Jordan’s nomination she responded “no ma’am, I think we still need conversations”
Still, Jordan signaled that the House will move forward with a vote on Tuesday, and projected confidence.
“Look, I felt good walking into the conference. I feel even better now. We’ve got a few more people we want to talk to, listen to. And then we’ll have a vote tomorrow,” Jordan said while leaving the meeting.
— Emily Brooks and Mychael Schnell
Jordan said he felt more confident after Monday night’s GOP conference meeting than before.
“I felt good walking into the conference,” he said. “I feel even better now.”
“We got a few more people we want to talk to, listen to, and then we’ll have a vote tomorrow.”
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) will vote on Tuesday for Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) for Speaker.
“I’m gonna vote the way I voted the first time, the first election we had,” he said.
“Integrity is the most important thing that all of us have. There’s nothing more important than that. When I see what’s going on in that conference, and understand that we had an election, and we elected somebody, and because people in that conference didn’t agree with the election, ‘no, no, no, we’ve got a stop it all now, and we’ve got to have another election.’ The real man in the room is Steve Scalise,” he said.
Kelly also introduced a resolution that would empower Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) through Nov. 17 or the election of a Speaker, whichever comes first.
At least five Republicans say they do not plan to support Jordan on the first ballot Tuesday: Reps. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.).
Jordan picked up momentum on Tuesday, but if every member of the House votes on Tuesday, that opposition is enough to deny Jordan the gavel.
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) says he does not plan to support Jordan “right now,” but will talk to him later tonight.
“We’re gonna meet and I am a no right now but I told him I would be open-minded to having that conversation,” Buck said.
One of the things Buck says he wants to bring up with Jordan is the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“If he’s gonna lead this conference during a presidential election cycle, particularly a presidential election year with primaries and caucuses around the country, he’s gonna have to be strong and say Donald Trump didn’t win the election,” Buck said.
Buck is the fifth Republican to say they do not plan to vote for Jordan on Tuesday, enough to deny the Ohio Republican the gavel if every House member votes.
— Aris Folley and Mychael Schnell
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said he won’t vote for Jordan for Speaker.
“In the first place, I am supporting a conservative Republican for Speaker who won the election when there’s to at least two folks,” he said. “Number two is, you know, I’m a really nice guy. I tried to get to yes, I will tell you, though, a little bit of advice if anybody’s trying to get my vote. The last thing you want to do is try to intimidate pressuring because then I close out entirely. So you know, that’s where I’m at.”
— Aris Folley
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said he would not vote for Jordan on the first ballot on Tuesday.
“We had a small group of folks who broke our rules and got rid of Kevin, and then a small group broke our rules and blocked Steve. Now they want us to follow the rules and support Jim and I don’t like that. I don’t play a game where the other guy can break the rules and win. As an American, I think we should stand up against that, but that’s what’s happened. We’ve had a minority of the majority dictate all of this, and it’s unacceptable. I’m gonna stand up and defend Kevin and Steve because this was wrong.”
Asked what the end game is, Bacon responded, “The end game is a small group of people need to say that some of us will not just be walked over on us and we’ve been walked over since January.”
He said Republicans “have candidates that can be a bigger consensus candidate.”
But he added that he is not a “never” on Jordan.
— Mychael Schnell and Emily Brooks
Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) said he would vote for Jordan for Speaker.
“I’ve had multiple conversations with Jim,” Molinaro said. “I’ve expressed my desire to have the issues that upstate New York cares about, fighting inflation, energy independence, commitment to fighting crime and securing our borders. And he’s assured me that members like me and the people I represent will have a voice at the table and he understands that we need to govern and for that I’ll be voting for him.”
Molinaro is a freshman moderate and represents a district that voted for President Biden in 2020.
— Mychael Schnell
Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said he supports Jordan ahead of Tuesday’s expected floor vote.
“I support our Speaker-designate. I supported Scalise as our Speaker designee, and I now support Jim Jordan as our Speaker-designate,” McHenry told reporters in the Capitol.
He said the plan is to hold a noon floor vote on the Speakership, and “the goal” is for Jordan to get 217 votes on the floor.
Asked if he was surprised at Jordan’s detractors flipping Monday, McHenry responded “he wanted time for the weekend and hopefully it was productive.”
— Mychael Schnell
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a moderate who represents a district President Biden carried in 2020, said Monday he would vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for Speaker.
Lawler said he told Jordan he’s not a “hell no,” but that, “unless you have the votes, you know, I’m not going to be there.”
“I still have a fundamental problem with the fact that you have a handful of people who have refused to work with the rest of the conference. They unceremoniously removed the Speaker. They blocked Steve Scalise, and now they want everybody to fall in line. And they’re using every pressure tactic they know, to try and pressure members,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“And I think that the challenge here is at the end of the day, regardless of who the Speaker is, we need to be able to govern, and we need to be able to govern as a conference and if we can’t do that, and you don’t have a majority, and that really is the fundamental issue here.”
— Regina Zilbermints
GOP Speaker nominee Jim Jordan (Ohio) told The Hill he thinks he will get the 217 votes needed to win the gavel on the House floor on the first ballot Tuesday.
“I think so,” Jordan responded when asked if he will get 217 votes on the first ballot, adding “I’m feeling good.”
He said his game plan ahead of Tuesday’s floor vote includes “listening to members.”
“When I left on Friday I said that, you know, those of you who have concerns, let’s talk about those, and I’ve heard their concerns, and I think we’re ready to elect a Speaker tomorrow,” he added.
Jordan also said he plans to address the GOP conference during their closed-door meeting at 6:30 p.m., where he will “talk about coming together for the American people.”
Asked if he plans to address his holdouts directly, Jordan said, “I’m gonna talk to the conference.”
— Mychael Schnell
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) was coy when asked by The Hill about his stance Monday.
“I don’t want to reward the bad behavior of Jordan supporters. They broke our conference rules to defeat McCarthy and Scalise, who won by our rules. You can’t have a competition when one side breaks the rules,” he told The Hill by text message.
— Mychael Schnell
Opposition to House GOP Speaker nominee Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is crumbling as Republicans return to Washington for a House vote to try to officially elect him.
Four key lawmakers who had signaled opposition to Jordan last week fell like a set of dominos Monday, giving the Ohio Republican a significant boost ahead of an expected floor vote Tuesday.
“My gut tells me we’re somewhere south of 10 who are still being recalcitrant,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told conservative radio host Erick Erickson when asked Monday about the opposition to Jordan.
It is a remarkable development after 13 days of turbulence in the House GOP following the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), which left many lawmakers and outside observers skeptical that Republicans could coalesce around any candidate.
— Emily Brooks and Mychael Schnell
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) is the latest anti-Jordan holdout to throw support to the Ohio Republican’s Speakership bid.
Buchanan, a Steve Scalise ally who came out against Jordan last week, said he “had a very productive conversation” with Jordan Monday and would support his candidacy on the House floor.
“Just received a call from @Jim_Jordan and had a very productive conservation. I informed him that I will be offering my support on the House floor. While I have always said that Jim is a good friend, I am deeply frustrated by the way this process has played out,” Buchanan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“However, I believe the future and immediate well-being and security of our country is too important and the need for Republicans to move forward united is greater than ever,” he added in a subsequent post on X.
— Mychael Schnell
Jordan indicated Monday that he would proceed to a House floor vote for Speaker at noon Tuesday regardless of whether he has the 217 votes he needs locked down.
“We will go to the floor tomorrow,” Jordan told CNN on Monday. “It’s not about pressuring anybody. It’s just about, we’ve got to have a Speaker.”
“You can’t open the House and do the work of the American people and help our dearest and closest friend Israel if you don’t have a Speaker,” Jordan said.
Pressed on his previous comments saying he would prefer that the GOP conference first assure that the Speaker nominee has the support from 217 Republicans before going to the floor, Jordan said: “I don’t know if there’s any way to ever get that in the room. I would love that. But I think the only way to do this the way the Founders intended is you have the vote tomorrow.”
Asked if he would have more than one ballot on Tuesday if he does not get 217 votes on the first ballot, Jordan said: “We’re going to elect a Speaker tomorrow. That’s — that’s what I think is gonna happen.”
— Emily Brooks