House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy will try again Friday to muster a majority on the floor to win the race for speaker after falling short in 11 rounds of voting over three days this week. The speaker’s election has not exceeded nine rounds since before the Civil War.
As McCarthy left the House chamber Thursday night, he was still expressing optimism about his prospects of becoming speaker, though he declined to predict when the voting might go his way.
“I’m not putting any timeline on it,” he told reporters. “I just think we’ve got some progress going on. We’ve got members talking. I think we’ve got a little movement, so we’ll see.”
On Friday morning, just before a 10:15 a.m. GOP conference call to present the framework of a deal with some of the GOP holdouts opposing him, McCarthy told CBS News, “We’re going to shock you today.”
McCarthy made two key concessions to the 21 conservative holdouts on Wednesday. The first would lower the threshold for the motion to vacate the chair to just one House member, meaning that any single member could call for a vote to oust the speaker. The second would give the GOP holdouts the power to pick two of the nine members of the House Rules Committee, which holds considerable power over which legislation goes to the floor.
Despite those compromises, none of the holdouts supported McCarthy in any of the four rounds of voting on Thursday.
After the House adjourned for the day, McCarthy chose to adopt a philosophical view of the succession of failed votes.
“It’s better that we go through this process right now so we can achieve the things we want to achieve for the American public,” he said, adding, “It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. And if we finish well, we’ll be very successful.”
The House adjourned shortly after 8 p.m. Thursday until noon Friday.
The continuing impasse leaves the House effectively in limbo, since lawmakers must first elect a speaker before moving on to other business in the new Congress.
Democrats have remained united behind New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the first Black party leader in either chamber of Congress. Jeffries and his lieutenants said Democrats “are united and are committed to staying in Washington for as long as it takes to get the Congress organized.”
Ellis Kim contributed to this report.
