The House Republican leader actually lost support during the third round of voting on Tuesday.The House Republican leader actually lost support during the third round of voting on Tuesday.
At the heart of Kevin McCarthy’s struggles for the speakership is a bloc of roughly two dozen conservative House Republicans opposed to his elevation. It’s a mix of veterans of the Tea Party class, newly elected members and perennial thorns in the side of leadership.
Here’s more on the 19 members of the House Republican caucus who have opposed McCarthy’s candidacy on the first three ballots (and the one who switched from McCarthy in the third ballot) — ensuring House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries actually won more votes during those rounds.
Republicans originally rallied behind the Arizona Republican, the former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, as a symbolic alternative to McCarthy during the first conference-wide vote for GOP leader. Thirty-one GOP lawmakers voted for someone other than McCarthy last November, a sign that McCarthy would not have the votes come Jan. 3. Ten Republicans voted for Biggs on Tuesday during the first speaker vote.
Bishop came to Congress in 2019 after time in the North Carolina state Legislature. A member of the Freedom Caucus, Bishop said in a statement Tuesday that McCarthy “is not the right candidate to be Speaker,” arguing he’s maintained the “status quo” that has made Congress unpopular among the American people.
Rep. Lauren Boebert gives an interview at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 3, 2023.
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Francis Chung/POLITICO
A lightning rod since she first knocked off a Republican incumbent in a 2020 primary, Boebert has long criticized the status quo in Washington. “I worked diligently with my conservative colleagues to put together a deal that would unify the conference behind Kevin McCarthy,” she said on Tuesday. “He rejected it.”
The Oklahoma Republican is a new member who succeeds Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) in representing the House seat covering almost all of the eastern portion of the state. A self-styled fiscal conservative in the vein of former Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), for whom he once worked, Brecheen originally cast his vote for Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.).
A member of the House since 2018, the Texas Republican said in a statement that Congress is “broken” and that despite negotiations with McCarthy and others, “ultimately many of the promises made lacked enforcement mechanisms necessary to ensure their implementation, casting doubt on the sincerity of reforms.”
The Georgia Republican first assumed office in 2021 and made waves when he likened the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to a “normal tourist visit.
