WASHINGTON (CN) — Dysfunction in the congressional Republican caucus deepened even further Friday as Ohio Representative Jim Jordan — the conference’s second candidate to fill the vacant House speakership — was forced to step aside after losing a third vote before the full chamber.
The move came during a closed-door meeting that occurred just hours after the vote, during which Jordan again failed to reach the required number of Republican votes to clinch the House’s top job. The Ohio congressman was the GOP’s second candidate to replace former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted by his own caucus earlier this month.
In a secret ballot, 112 of 221 House Republicans voted against Jordan’s candidacy. Just 88 lawmakers voted to keep the Ohio congressman on.
Jordan’s retreat punctuates the third straight week that the House has been without a clear leader.
During a brief press conference Friday afternoon, Jordan urged his party to unify and find a consensus candidate.
“We need to come together and figure out who our speaker is going to be,” Jordan told reporters. He added that he would support whoever got the caucus’s eventual support, but declined to say who he thought should take his place.
At least one Republican lawmaker has said he will seek his party’s endorsement for speaker — Oklahoma Congressman Kevin Hern, who supported Jordan’s bid but quickly threw his hat in the ring after his Ohio colleague stepped away.
“We must unify and do it fast,” Hern wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “We need a different type of leader who has a proven track record of success, which is why I’m running for Speaker of the House.”
Whoever the Republican caucus selects as their third speaker candidate is facing an uphill battle. The speaker-designee must secure at least 217 votes from the GOP’s 221 House seats to lock down the speakership — a threshold that so far has dashed the hopes of two other nominees.
During three rounds of voting this week, Jordan never garnered more than 200 ballots from his colleagues. Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise, the caucus’s first pick to become House speaker, backed away from the race before his first floor vote after it became clear he couldn't to secure 217 votes.
Jordan’s allies were incensed with their caucus Friday for railroading the lawmaker out.
“The most popular Republican in Congress was just knifed in an anonymous vote in a secret closed door meeting in the basement of the Capitol,” Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz said. “This is the swamp at work.”
Gaetz’s fellow Florida lawmaker Anna Paulina Luna said that the GOP turmoil of the last several weeks “just displayed to the world how out of touch some of these members are with the American people.”
The House has been without a speaker since early October, when a minority of the chamber’s Republican conference led a successful putsch against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The hard-right lawmakers had long accused McCarthy of reneging on promises he made while running for speaker in January but were moved to action in late September after the then-speaker negotiated a short-term spending patch with House Democrats to avert a government shutdown.
Until a permanent speaker is elected, the House is effectively in cryostasis, unable to debate or vote on bills. North Carolina Patrick McHenry is standing in as the House’s temporary top lawmaker, but his powers are limited.
Before Jordan’s ouster, House Republicans had toyed with the idea of expanding McHenry’s authority, allowing congressional business to continue while the Ohio Republican whipped votes behind the scenes. Several GOP lawmakers came out against the plan, and with Jordan out of the picture it appears unlikely to come to fruition now.
While the House is immobilized, the country is inching closer to yet another fiscal crisis. The 45-day stopgap budget negotiated between former Speaker McCarthy and House Democrats is set to run out in mid-November. If Congress is unable to pass another spending patch or a full appropriations package by the deadline, a government shutdown would be all but inevitable.
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