WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, narrowly lost for the 14th time his bid to become the Speaker of the House of Representatives despite appearances late Friday he had swayed enough of the Republican holdouts to back him to lead the lower chamber of Congress.
Late Friday night, McCarthy received 216 votes for speaker, missing the threshold by a single vote after two lawmakers voted present and two each voted for U.S. Reps. Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs.
Prior to Friday night’s vote, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse political science professor Anthony Chergosky said getting those last few holdouts would not be an easy task.
“They have to unify all elements of their political party and that’s what Kevin McCarthy is struggling with right now,” Chergosky said.
“He’s got these members of his party who really do favor hardball tactics, the House Freedom Caucus,” he added. “And on the other hand, he’s got a number of members of his caucus, a number of House Republicans, who represent districts that Joe Biden won.”
McCarthy won over some of the far-right holdouts with a series of concessions, including a new provision in the House rules that would allow a single member to be able to call for an ouster vote of the speaker.
READ MORE: McCarthy faces speaker race tumult
“There’s a general sense among members of Congress that Congress is broken but people disagree on why Congress is broken and they disagree on the potential fixes,” Chergosky said. “Many members of the House Republicans are using this very competitive speaker’s vote as an opportunity to try to gain concessions from Kevin McCarthy — try to gain promises from him about how he might reform the House of Representatives.”
“And so he’s got to kind of buy off people here and make promises to get the math to add up to a majority vote,” he added.
For their part, all of Wisconsin’s six House Republicans have backed McCarthy to take the speaker’s gavel.
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