Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) won re-election as speaker of the House after a single roll call vote – but he didn’t do it alone. When the vote was first counted, Johnson found himself just short of the goal. After a call from the president to be, however, two out of three GOP holdouts had a change of heart.
Drama in the Speaker Vote
When the House convened to vote for speaker just after noon on Friday, January 3, most Republicans had voted for Mike Johnson. But three others – Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Keith Self of Texas, and Ralph Norman of South Carolina – voted for other Republican members of Congress instead. The Democrats, of course, stood united behind their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Electing a speaker requires a simple majority (50% plus one vote) of the voting members. In this case, the required number of votes was 218. With a slim Republican majority of just 219 to 215, Johnson could only afford to lose one vote. Thanks to the three holdouts, it initially stalled out at 216 for Johnson and 215 for Jeffries.
It seemed for a while that the first vote would fail. Back in 2023, when the 118th Congress first got started, it took 15 roll call votes over four days to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as speaker of the House. With Friday’s vote stalled for more than an hour, it seemed yet another dramatic and drawn-out process was to follow.
Presidential Intervention
But the vote didn’t end immediately. Instead, it remained open for more than an hour while Johnson huddled with the holdouts in hopes of convincing them to change their votes. President-elect Donald Trump spoke to Johnson and the others on a call.
“He just said, ‘What’s it going to take to get a deal?’” Rep. Norman told reporters after the fact. “I said, ‘Mr. President, we just want Mike Johnson to back you up so that you can get your deal; you can get everything you want.’ He said: ‘I get that. Mike’s the only one who can be elected.’”
After the call with Trump, only Mr. Massie refused to change his vote. Still, Norman and Self made 218, the magic number, and Mike Johnson was elected speaker again. But with such fierce opposition from some members of his party, one must wonder just how long before it all falls apart again.
Trouble Looms
Members of the House Freedom Caucus penned a letter, listing their demands and explaining that they only voted for Johnson “because of our steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors.”
“We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months,” the letter continued. Freedom Caucus members want Johnson to stop putting legislation to a vote that requires Democratic support to pass. They want a tax and budget bill that “reduces spending and the deficit in real terms,” and they don’t want federal borrowing to be increased without first seeing “real spending cuts.” Can Johnson deliver on these demands – or is this simply a sign that trouble still looms on the horizon? Talking to the press after the fact, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) likened the speakership fight to an “intramural wrestling match.” The rest of the year, he predicts, will be similar. “Welcome to the 119th Congress,” Amodei said.
After electing Johnson as speaker again, the House GOP then approved the proposed rule set that had Democrats so upset earlier in the week – including the change in how the speaker chair is vacated. Now, it will require nine representatives, all from the majority party (Republicans, in this case), to call a vote to vacate. How well that will help Johnson is unclear. It was a group of his fellow Republicans that ousted McCarthy in 2023, and it was largely the same group who would have given Johnson the boot in 2024 had the Democrats not saved him.
Perhaps Friday’s relatively quick and smooth process – it may have taken more than an hour, but it was still technically just a single roll call – heralds peace and unity among the Grand Old Party in the House. But then again, maybe the struggle to make it happen and the scathing words of his colleagues after the fact foreshadow a rough road of Republican in-fighting ahead. Either way, as Amodei said, “Welcome to the 119th Congress.”
