(Trends Wide) — The 118th US Congress will open on Tuesday, ushering in a new era of Republican control in the House and a high-stakes leadership fight that will determine who will be president.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy has the support of most Republicans to be the party’s leader, but has so far not garnered enough votes to become Speaker of the House.
Standing between McCarthy and the job he has long sought are a handful of conservative lawmakers. These conservatives — many members of the Freedom Caucus — do not trust McCarthy or those who lobby on his behalf, including former President Donald Trump who has yet to convince them that McCarthy will adequately take on the Democrats and President Joe Biden.
Republicans will only have a slim majority (222 Republicans to 212 Democrats), meaning McCarthy can’t afford many defections if he wants to get the 218 votes he needs to become House speaker.
How the day will unfold
Congress cannot function properly until a Speaker of the House is appointed. The position is filled on the first day of a new Congress, January 3, even before elected members are sworn in.
Thus, the members will meet this Tuesday morning to tie up the loose ends and close the 117th Congress. Then, at noon Eastern time, the Speaker of the House will call the new Congress and call a quorum. The first important order of business will be the election of the president. Democrats will propose the name of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries in the race, and Republicans will propose McCarthy.
Then the secretary will call the roll and each member will indicate the name of the person for whom they vote. If no one accumulates the majority of the votes cast, it goes to a second ballot. If another vote becomes necessary, Congress may recess the house before members continue voting.
El republicano Kevin McCarthy (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)
Members can vote for whoever they want
There is no rule that requires the president to be a member of the House. Members can vote for anyone and can protest by skipping the vote or by voting “present”. This, although the vast majority will vote for the leader of their party.
Both parties met last year to define their leadership. Democrats selected Jeffries and Republicans agreed to run McCarthy, albeit by a margin that indicated a potential fight might be ahead.
McCarthy is up against a long-shot candidate: far-right Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona. In his figure it is expressed what is the opposition that McCarthy faces and that he could take votes away from him.
If no one achieves the majority…
Lawmakers will keep voting until someone wins a majority. They can carry out several successive votes on January 3. Votes can also be postponed to negotiate between themselves and with the other party. But the House will not kick off the new Congress until a president is elected.
This is what people are talking about when they refer to a “floor fight”: when members of the House require multiple votes to elect their president.
100 years have passed
In the more than 200 years since the first two-year Congress met in 1789, there have been just 14 floor fights, according to the House historian.
All but one of those presidential elections were held before the Civil War while the two-party system was evolving. Back then, floor fights were common.
But since the Civil War, there has only been one floor fight, exactly 100 years ago, when it took nine votes for Rep. Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts to be elected Speaker of the House in 1923.
there is a bit of mystery
The Politico news site notes that so much time has passed since then that it is unclear how the proceedings would proceed if no one wins a majority. A Congressional Research Service summary of the presidential election simply says that if no one gets a majority, the vote is repeated.
Hakeem Jeffries will make history by succeeding Nancy Pelosi.
There were exceptions to majority voting
Back in 1849, the House was in session for so long without being able to elect a president (19 days) that members decided to vote with a plurality — or simple majority — instead of an absolute majority. The members finally confirmed that the election would be by plurality with a majority vote.
The epic record for a floor fight
In 1855 and 1856, it took 133 separate votes for Representative Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts to be elected, again by plurality rather than majority.
The process lasted for more than a month and included a kind of inquisition in the plenary session of the Chamber of the three contenders. They answered questions about his vision of the expansion of slavery. Read more about this topic on the Congressional Historian website.
It’s also interesting to read about Banks; the official House biography of him notes that he was elected to office as a Republican, an Independent, a member of the Americas Party and a Democrat.
218 votes are not always required
One important thing to remember is that McCarthy doesn’t technically need 218 votes to become president. Instead, a majority of those present and voting is required to obtain the presidency, which is usually 218 legislators. But if enough people skip voting or vote “present,” the number of votes needed for a majority may decrease.
For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was elected with 216 votes in 2021.
Former President John Boehner won re-election to the office with 216 votes in 2015 after rejecting a conservative rebellion like the one McCarthy is facing right now.
Most of the bargaining and lobbying occurs long before the plenary vote. Pelosi got 220 votes in 2019 after converting a majority of fellow Democrats who had opposed her. She did so by agreeing to serve only a few more years as president, a promise she fulfilled by announcing her decision in November not to seek re-election to the leadership.
The ability to remove the president is a sticking point
Conservatives opposed to McCarthy have said they want to restore latent, arcane power to allow any member to call for a vote to remove the president at any time. Read more about the “motion to remove”.
Republicans who oppose McCarthy see him as a tool for accountability. McCarthy and his allies, by contrast, see it as a factor in bad governance if he is constantly at risk of losing the job he is finding so elusive.
Trends Wide’s Clare Foran contributed to this report.
