Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) is no closer to the speakership than the two nominees before him after hard-line members of the conference opposed him in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.
His first clue was the vote margins during a secret ballot election in which it took Emmer five rounds to defeat eight other candidates running against him. He beat Rep. Mike Johnson (R-AL), the vice chairman of the House GOP Conference, 117-97 on the final ballot, but those totals were hardly better than the performance of Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), the first nominee, and worse than Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), the second.
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Emmer requested a roll-call vote to see where the entire conference stood on his nomination, revealing 26 holdouts in a chamber where he can only afford to lose three. Most are members of the conservative Freedom Caucus, the same antagonists who almost blocked congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the speakership in January.
To make matters worse, former President Donald Trump, who signaled Monday he would stay neutral on the race despite misgivings from some in his orbit, came out against Emmer shortly after his nomination.
Taken together, Emmer's prospects of becoming speaker are grim, as is any hope that Republicans can move past three weeks of division and dysfunction.
“It's amazing to me that we're in a position where you have some people who think that a speaker candidate has to agree with them on every major and most every minor issue of the day,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD). “It's going to be hard to ever get anybody elected if that's the standard.”
The conference, after huddling for five hours on Tuesday, finally broke for a two-hour recess so Emmer could continue speaking to those opposed to his candidacy. But Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), who lost his own speakership bid on the first ballot, told reporters the holdouts so far are dug in.
"I think people have said you didn't move the needle," he said.
McCarthy, who lost the gavel earlier this month after eight hard-liners voted with Democrats to remove him, called the grievances against Emmer both personal and policy-oriented.
Emmer has a centrist streak, having voted to codify same-sex marriage into federal law last year. He also voted to certify the 2020 election, surely something Trump weighed in siding against him. But Emmer also suffers from a personal beef with Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who lost the race for majority whip in November. Banks vowed to never vote for him on the House floor.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if this ended in an actual fistfight between Banks and Emmer,” one GOP aide said. “Put my money on the hockey dad.”
Banks, meanwhile, maintains that his vote was centered on Emmer's own voting record.
“I can't go along with putting one of the most moderate members of the entire Republican conference in the speaker's chair,” he told reporters.
McCarthy doubted the opposition was insurmountable for Emmer, citing exhaustion within the conference. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), one of the holdouts, said he was not in the "Never Emmer" camp and could still be swayed.
But members have little appetite for another drawn-out process. Sessions suggested the party start working its way down the list, looking at Johnson if Emmer cannot secure the votes.
Banks indicated he is willing to support Johnson’s candidacy, though Johnson fully backs Emmer.
“I'm in full support of Tom Emmer and trying to do everything I can to help him get there,” Johnson said. “I've been talking to some of my closest friends in the world who are not in favor of Tom at this point and trying to work through those differences."
"We have to get this Congress open again, our party is the majority party, and we've got to govern and we have to govern well,” he added.
Emmer had been an attractive candidate to most of the conference, especially given his tenure running the House GOP’s campaign arm. Should his nomination be withdrawn, the party is at risk of electing less and less experienced candidates in an election cycle when institutional know-how is critical.
House Republicans had struck an optimistic note emerging from a conference-wide candidate forum on Monday night, suggesting that the party had moved on from the sabotage and grudge-holding that defined Scalise’s and Jordan’s candidacies.
But those divisions were on display on Tuesday as most of the holdouts voted for Jordan in the roll-call vote. The remaining either voted “present” or supported Johnson or Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), a Freedom Caucus member who dropped out of the race after the fourth ballot.
At this point, just about all the conference can agree on is that their divisions should be hashed out before bringing Emmer or someone else to the House floor. Emmer won a majority of the conference vote to become the speaker designate, but he will require 217 votes, or a majority of the entire chamber, to win the gavel.
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If Emmer cannot cobble together that support, centrists could be tempted to work with Democrats to elevate someone like interim Speaker Patrick McHenry (R-NC), though such a plan received widespread backlash within the conference last week.
The conference will reconvene at 4 p.m. to work through the impasse.