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Two rival Republican candidates for US House Speaker are scrambling for support the day before a planned vote, amid a growing sense of urgency to resolve the question of who will lead the chamber and take on pressing crises across the globe.
Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, and Jim Jordan, who chairs the judiciary committee, will make their case to colleagues in a private forum on Tuesday evening. House Republicans then plan to vote on Wednesday for their party’s nominee for speaker.
Neither Jordan nor Scalise has yet claimed the upper hand. “No one has [a] clear majority yet,” Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican from Tennessee who supports Scalise, told the Financial Times.
The abrupt downfall of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week has created chaos in the House, leaving the lower chamber unable to do anything of consequence. McCarthy urged House Republicans to not put his name forward again for Speaker, but would not tell reporters who he supported to succeed him.
House Republicans will choose between Scalise, who has climbed up the leadership ladder for the past decade, and Jordan, whom former Republican House Speaker John Boehner once described as a “legislative terrorist”. McCarthy later managed to bring Jordan into the fold by giving him top posts on the powerful oversight and judiciary committees.
Jordan has the edge in public endorsements from House Republicans, and the support of former president Donald Trump, but is still far from winning over a majority of the House.
“Jim is a fighter, a great spokesman, and has a history of working tirelessly for what he believes,” said Ralph Norman, a Republican from South Carolina.
Scalise has had health concerns — he was shot and wounded in 2017 at a practice before the annual congressional baseball game, and announced this year he was working through treatments for multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. Nevertheless, he has raised millions more than Jordan in campaigns to win and hold the House.
A political adviser to Jordan countered: “People are always wanting him to sign letters and fundraising appeals and direct mail because his name is so strong amongst conservative donors.”
McCarthy’s loss has left Republicans worried about their ability to hold on to the House in the 2024 elections without their best fundraiser. A few House Republicans have said they would vote for him to become Speaker again nevertheless. It took McCarthy a record 15 ballots to clinch the Speaker’s gavel in January.
“It was always going to be a tough fight to keep the House,” said Ben Howard, a former top legislative aide to Trump, McCarthy and Scalise. “The slim House GOP majority and money increasingly going to the presidential [race] alone made it tough. Ousting Speaker McCarthy certainly didn’t make it any easier.”
In the meantime, the House is at a standstill, and unable to pass legislation, as the US debates whether to give additional aid to Israel and Ukraine in their respective conflicts with Hamas and Russia. Congress must also pass a spending bill by November 17 or the US will face a government shutdown.
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