Kevin McCarthy has once again made history by losing a third series of votes for speaker of the House.
The latest defeats occurred throughout Thursday into the evening after Mr McCarthy offered hardline Republicans even more concessions to secure the speaker’s gavel. Rep Matt Gaetz of Florida switched up his vote to nominate former President Donald Trump as speaker during the eighth vote. The House of Representatives has now conducted nearly a dozen votes without selecting a speaker, paralyzing the chamber and drawing increasingly impatient statements from Republicans in the Senate.
In the ninth vote, Mr McCarthy’s numbers actually dropped when Representative Ken Buck missed the vote, reducing Mr McCarthy’s tally to 200. Mr Buck wasn’t expected to return the next day, putting the would-be Speaker’s margin of victory further out of reach.
Mr Gaetz briefly switched his vote to Representative Kevin Hern of Oklahoma after Representative Lauren Boebert nominated him, but returned to nominating Donald Trump once again once the 11th vote began.
On Wednesday, Republican rebels seeking to block Mr McCarthy from becoming Speaker had rallied behind Rep Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican who has only been in the House of Representatives since 2021. Twenty members backed Mr Donalds in a vote.
There was no sign of any effect whatsoever from the all-caps endorsement of Mr McCarthy that Mr Trump issued on Truth Social the day before.
The votes have proceeded throughout the week with little sign of meaningful movement in any direction. The only significant change was the movement of rebel votes to Mr Donalds from Jim Jordan, who a day earlier declined to put himself forward as a compromise candidate and nominated Mr McCarthy. Signs of a preliminary deal emerged on Thursday evening as the chamber adjourned, but even McCarthy supporters were sceptical that it would be enough to push him over the top.
“I actually feel I felt progressively better over the over the period of the last 36 hours,” said Rep Patrick McHenry, a supporter of Mr McCarthy. “Every hour has been successfully better than the last.”
But rebel member Matt Gaetz spoke to reporters after viewing the deal and said that any agreement which resulted in Mr McCarthy’s victory was unacceptable.
The California Republican and previous leader of the GOP caucus remained adamant heading into Wednesday and Thursday’s votes that he would emerge as Speaker when the process concluded. But even Republicans aligned with leadership were beginning to acknowledge the scope of the disarray that their party finds itself in, calling the process “messy” as it transpired.
“It’s a feature, not a bug,” Rep Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin argued in his speech nominating his ally, Mr McCarthy, for the fourth time.
Democrats, meanwhile, remained unified behind Hakeem Jeffries. The New York congressman came out ahead thanks to the defections of rebel GOP members from Mr McCarthy’s total. Were the other totals to remain unchanged, he would only actually need to pick up five votes himself to become Speaker.
Mr Jeffries’s caucus has thus far resisted any attempts by Mr McCarthy’s team to have members vote “present”, which would lower the threshhold needed for his victory. They’ve also yet to come out formally behind any centrist Republican candidate who could win their support over Mr McCarthy, a move discussed by Rep Fred Upton and others on Tuesday as a possible means of freezing out conservatives.
Despite his optimism, on Thursday, it looked like Mr McCarthy’s desperation was mounting. After a seventh failed vote, reporting indicated that Mr McCarthy wanted to adjourn, though it was quickly clear he didn’t have the votes to do so. And overnight, news reports revealed that he had offered a new series of concessions to the Freedom Caucus, including seats on the Rules Committee and lowering the threshold for a motion to vacate the chair to just one member.
But those conservatives may be more resistant than ever before to ending their campaign to block Mr McCarthy from becoming speaker. Scott Perry, chair of the Freedom Caucus, declared on Thursday morning that there was no deal and that trust had been broken between GOP leadership and its far-right wing. Mr Perry later told The Independent that he had not spoken to Mr McCarthy on Thursday.
“I’ve been busy today,” he said. “The main problem is is that this town is broken. We're using this opportunity to make sure that we make the transformational changes to ensure that Congress works for the American people.”
Two representatives, Lauren Boebert and Josh Brecheen, switched their votes on the eighth round to support Kevin Hern, another member not officially challenging Mr McCarthy.
One Republican congresswoman-elect, Anna Paulina Luna, told The Independent that several members of the so-called “Never Kevin” group had left Tuesday’s GOP caucus meeting feeling “disrespected” and likely in the camp of being unmoveable on the issue.
Allies of Mr McCarthy were biting in their criticism of the rebels, even as those same rebels urged them to stop the attacks.
“It’s about egos, not about policy,” Rep Nancy Mace told The Independent. “They were asked point blank yesterday, what more do they want? They didn’t have an answer.”
Mike Garcia, another Republican ally of Mr McCarthy, added of the holdouts: “I think they are marginalising themselves.”
And Tom Cole, another leadership-connected Republican, agreed that the holdouts were “putting things at risk here”.
The votes this week were broken up by brief periods in which members dissolved into conversations on the floor. CSPAN cameras captured conservatives having animated conversations with their Republican colleagues, though it wasn’t clear whether either side was making much progress in convincing holdout members.
The holdouts, for their part, predicted even further defections from Mr McCarthy’s camp and offered little hope for him becoming speaker.
“I think you're going to continue to see attrition from Kevin McCarthy, from the votes that he's receiving. I think you may see significant attrition in the vote tonight, if we come back again and vote again at eight o'clock tonight,” Congressman Bob Good told The Independent.
He went on to predict: “And so they are ready. Increasingly ready, I believe to look at other candidates as that reality sets in.”
