Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) has determined that he can’t win the support of the 217 Republicans needed to secure the speakership and could drop out of the race as early as today, according to Newsmax.
In a secret ballot Wednesday, House Republicans voted 113-99 to nominate Scalise over Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for speaker, but Scalise appears unable to get to 217.
The majority leader can only afford to lose four GOP votes and according Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), at least 20 Republicans have declared that they will not be voting for Scalise.
The race was triggered last week when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduced a motion to vacate the chair of speaker and a majority of the House—all Democrats and eight Republicans—voted against Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
“There is a chance that Scalise will drop out of the race and we will see a shake-up,” Newsmax reported Thursday morning. “Sources say Jim Jordan will re-enter the race if/when he drops out.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Green (R-Ga.) is one of the Republicans backing Jordan for speaker.
“I’ll be voting for Jim Jordan for Speaker when we vote on the House floor,” she told CNN Thursday. MTG said she believed Jordan had a clearer plan on how to move the House forward and although she “likes Steve Scalise a lot,” his bone cancer diagnosis concerned her. “I would like to see him put his full efforts into defeating that,” she said.
Later Thursday, MTG took aim at her colleague Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who is also backing Jordan for speaker.
“I like Steve Scalise, and as I said, I want him to beat cancer, and he should be focused on that. What I do think is an unfair and quite frankly disgusting attack is members of our conference using Democrat talking points, using the same lines of attack that Democrats use against every single Republican, every single election, every single day, in these halls of Congress to attack Steve,” she wrote on X. “He isn’t a White Supremacist. We all know that. He’s a good man.”
Mace told CNN on Wednesday that she wouldn’t support Scalise’s bid because he had attended an event in 2002 hosted by the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Scalise later said that addressing the group was a “mistake I regret.”
“I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” she told CNN.
“Support who you want. But when we have a member of our conference using Democrat BLM lines to attack a guy for Speaker that more than 100 of our own conference supports, you’re now saying half the conference supports a white supremacist and giving Dems ammunition against half our conference,” MTG continued.
“I want a speaker we can all unite behind and one that reflects what our Republican voters want. They want an agenda like President Trump’s. I want a party that’s not always splintered into five factions. I want a party that’s a single fist so we can knock out the Democrats and save this country,” she concluded.
House Republicans held a meeting with all GOP members at noon Thursday, but didn’t seem any closer to choosing the next speaker afterwards.
Rep. Andy Bigg (R-Ariz.) said: “This business of just having a struggle session doesn’t really work. It doesn’t seem to move anybody. What you got to do is you’re going to have to break it down into small groups and find out where people are and and see who moves and who doesn’t move.”
Rep. Patrick McHenry, who has been acting as speaker pro tempore since McCarthy was ousted, will bring the vote up on the chamber floor when Republicans reach a consensus.