A fourth vote for House Speaker on Wednesday resulted in no one gaining enough votes to attain the speakership. The House remains leaderless, pending a 5th vote for House Speaker. 20 in the GOP voted for Donalds over McCarthy, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted “present.” This despite negotiations Tuesday night that were intended to secure a victory for McCarthy.
This after three contentious votes were held on the House floor on Tuesday, with the GOP nominating Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Byron Donalds, and Andy Biggs. The Democrats had one candidate, Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, NY, who continues to earn all 212 Democrat votes.
McCarthy was believed to be seeking an adjournment of the House until Thursday, likely knowing that he did not have the votes.
218 votes were needed to attain the speakership, and dissension among the ranks of the GOP led to fights on the House floor, exhibiting a raucous and rebellious form of democracy that had not been seen in over a century.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy pointed this out while nominating his friend Byron Donalds, saying that the kind of debate that was seen on the floor over the House Speaker should be present for all of the most pressing issues before Congress.
“This country needs a change,” Roy said. “This country needs leadership that does not reflect this city, this town that is badly broken. The House of Representatives is the people’s house. It represents the entirety of our country. And we each represent some 750,000 people. And we come here and it. Here we sit in a room filled with those representatives.”
The House chamber was full of representatives for the House Speaker vote, but as Roy pointed out, it is rarely this full. “We should be in here having this kind of a conversation with this many people in the room about Ukraine,” Roy said.
“And we should debate the merits and we should debate the ups and downs of being involved. We should debate the $45 billion. We should debate whether it should be more or less we should debate whether it should be paid for we should debate what the result we should demand. The only way you’re gonna get that is if you change the roles and have the leadership to advance the roles to make sure that we can do that,” he said.
Roy was one of the hold-outs demanding a change in leadership away from McCarthy and the GOP establishment. McCarthy was endorsed by Donald Trump.
