Jim Jordan, the chair of the judiciary committee, has the support of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is running to succeed him. McCarthy shows faith in Jordan’s ability to garner enough support to prevail in a floor vote.
McCarthy gave reporters the reassurance that things are moving forward as planned and that a new House Speaker will be chosen soon.
He was asked if he supported Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA), who recently received backing from the GOP conference and might potentially replace Jordan. Jordan eventually won the Republican nomination after outpolling House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) by 25 votes, despite facing stiff opposition.
“I’m going to support Jim,” when asked if he would back the other candidate, McCarthy responded. Later on, Scott claimed that the “conference has spoken” and pushed his supporters to cast their ballots for Jordan.
“Do you think that he has the votes to go to the floor?” another reporter asked McCarthy. “I think he’s got the votes, but we’ll see,” McCarthy answered.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and the eight other Republicans who voted against McCarthy have drawn the ire of Scott and a number of other Republicans. When questioned about Scott’s bid for Speaker, McCarthy said that everyone has the right to run but that he thinks Jim is more qualified for the position.
McCarthy radiates confidence in his support of Jordan and is convinced that doing so will persuade disgruntled Republican lawmakers to find common ground and support a new speaker.
Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL) recently declared his unshakable support for Kevin McCarthy in a statement. He highlighted that it would not be right for 4% of the conference to be in a position to dominate the other 94%. Rutherford made it clear, “I strongly oppose the idea of allowing Matt Gaetz and the other seven to prevail by choosing their preferred speaker.”
In a separate meeting with reporters, McCarthy pushed the conference to unite and shot down requests from certain Republican members for his return. “We’ve gotta get this back on track, we’ve got to solve this problem,” the former House Speaker said. “I think we’re on a path now to do that. They were wanting to debate a-lot of different things. They said, ‘let’s move through this, let’s have a good debate.’”
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“They tried to make a motion in there to bring me back and I just told them, ‘no, let’s not do that. Let’s walk through this and have an election,’” he continued. “And I think Jim Jordan would do an excellent job.”
