After three failed rounds of voting on Tuesday, a president could not be elected to the US House of Representatives on Wednesday either, as a group of Republicans narrowly voted in three more rounds against Kevin McCarthy, who also led the faction in the previous cycle.
On the first ballot on Wednesday, the fourth general election, Texas Representative Chip Roy nominated Florida’s Byron Donalds as an opponent to McCarthy. On Tuesday, both representatives voted against McCarthy. can be here Watch the session live. In the first round on Wednesday, McCarthy had 201 votes, if everyone else was present, he would have needed 218 (Republicans have a total of 222 representatives).
Exactly the same 20 Republicans blocked McCarthy’s election on Tuesday, though former President Donald Trump has since publicly asked the rebels to support the California representative. In addition, compared to the previous day, the number of votes cast for McCarthy decreased by one, due to the absence of her supporter Victoria Spartz on Tuesday. And despite not having the necessary majority, Democrat Hakeem Jefferies ranked first in that poll as well.
The situation didn’t improve in the second round either: Jeffries received 212 minority Democrat votes, 201 voted for McCarthy, 20 Republican far-right announced Donalds’ name, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana again abstained. The same thing happened on the third vote, and sixth overall, and the House session was suspended until 8:00 pm local time.
After several hours of negotiations, both McCarthy and some of his opponents indicated that progress had been made, but that they expected more negotiations. In the end, a large majority of Republicans voted to postpone the meeting until Thursday noon local time.
They didn’t start today
As we wrote, on Tuesday, a vote was held for the first time on who should be Speaker of the House with a new composition due to the midterm elections in November. Although Republicans are in the majority (they have 222 representatives, 218 is required for a majority), the first vote was unsuccessful, as 19 ultra-Republicans refused to support McCarthy, who led the representative group in the previous cycle. The largest proportion of the votes went to Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, who is the Democratic candidate, and his party received 212 votes.
Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, one of the candidates on the first ballot on Wednesday – PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America/AFP
The second round took place in a similar way, with the difference that 19 opponents voted for Jim Jordan, who himself nominated McCarthy for Speaker of the House. After that, a third round was required, but McCarthy still could not consolidate his base. Moreover, 20 people already voted for Jordan in the last round yesterday, so the former leader lost one more vote. The fourth round has been postponed until Wednesday, but perhaps it is not a good sign that the last time it was not possible to elect a speaker in the first round (exactly 100 years ago, in 1923), then the candidate of the time, Frederick Gillett, only managed to The ninth vote collected the correct number of votes.
It wasn’t just that the official wasn’t elected, Boom. Without the Speaker, newly elected representatives cannot be confirmed, and so the entire legislature is on hold until the vote is successful.
the New York Times analysis According to him, the most radical members of the party are really fighting against the election of McCarthy. Still 12 out of 20 insist Joe Biden won the presidency from Donald Trump fraudulently. It is a bit interesting that Trump is backing McCarthy in the House race.
Fifteen insurgent Republicans were re-elected to the House of Representatives, and 14 of those fifteen voted on January 6, 2021, that the House does not accept the election results. During the course of the campaign, 17 out of 20 had the support of Trump.
