On Capitol Hill, Round 7 of voting for House speaker has concluded. If last night’s marathon of negotiations to resolve the impasse had any effect, it is not yet evident as the needle did not move: Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) got 201 GOP votes. That is, he failed to get the votes of 21 Republicans and remains 17 short of the 218 needed for a majority — provided all 434 eligible members-elect vote for a named person.

Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) again got all 212 Democratic votes to top the field. The current protest candidate favored by the GOP dissenters, Byron Donalds (R., Fla.), got 19 votes – including his own. (After voting for McCarthy in the first two rounds, Donalds has been voting for himself since he was formally nominated; that’s in contrast to Jim Jordan, who, though nominated in an earlier round, has voted for McCarthy in all seven rounds.) Victoria Spartz (R., Ind.) was again the only member-elect to vote present (as I noted in an earlier post, she was initially a McCarthy supporter but has switched to present after the first three rounds in an effort, she says, to encourage more intraparty negotiations in order to break the stalemate).

Donalds fell one short of the 20 he got in round six because of an on-brand Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), perhaps looking to stay in the good graces of the patron whose McCarthy plea he snubbed yesterday, cast his vote for former president Donald Trump.

Jeffries 212

McCarthy 201

Donalds 19

Trump 1 [Gaetz]

Present 1 [Spartz]