From the first Morning Jolt of the week:
The Fight for the Speakership: About a Dozen Votes Away from High Drama
Now we’ve got three Republicans interested in being Speaker of the House – John Boehner, Ted Yoho, and Louie Gohmert.
Gohmert says they’ll need 29 House Republicans to say that they’re not supporting Boehner. In November, Americans elected 247 House Republicans; Rep. Michael Grimm resigns today. That leaves 246. Boehner needs 218 votes to remain as Speaker. [SEE BELOW]
Rep. Walter Jones said he had been talking to 16 to 18 House Republicans in an effort against Boehner. Presuming his count is correct and they stay unified, the anti-Boehner forces will need another 11 to 13 to not support the current Speaker, either by supporting another candidate or not voting. (In 2013, nine Republicans voted against Boehner and three didn’t vote.)
Members of Congress who have said publicly they won’t support Boehner include Jones, Reps Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma, Paul Gosar of Arizona, freshman Gary Palmer of Alabama, Steve King of Iowa, and Yoho and Golmert.
Are there another 11 to 13 members willing to cross Boehner? As the old saying goes, if you’re going to strike at the king, you had better not miss. Boehner has demonstrated he’s willing to throw members off committees for being too loudly and openly rebellious.
Yoho and Golmert are correct that the first hurdle is preventing 218 votes on the first ballot. Note that neither Yoho, in only his second term, nor Golmert, one of the most conservative members of the conference, will have an easy time cobbling 218 votes together. (It’s easy to wonder if the effort to replace Boehner would be better with one candidate instead of two, or whether it’s inevitable that one will withdraw quickly Tuesday.)
Odds are Boehner will remain as Speaker come Tuesday evening – but it’s worth counting heads and seeing how close the number of openly anti-Boehner members gets to 29. There might be some drama yet.
One thing the coverage of the Speaker race hasn’t yet illuminated is just how many House Republicans have serious enough beefs with Boehner’s leadership to prefer the devil they don’t know to the one they do. A year ago, House aides expected Rep. Tom Price of Georgia to run for Speaker; Price seems pretty busy these days, taking over the House Budget Committee from Paul Ryan and preparing entitlement reform proposals.
UPDATE: A reader writes in to clarify that to win, a candidate for Speaker only needs a majority of votes cast, so vacancies, abstentions and those voting “present” don’t count towards the total:
Four times in our history has the Speaker been elected by less than a majority of the House membership, with the most recent instance being in 1997, when Newt Gingrich was elected with only 216 votes for him. Here’s the full historical analysis from the Congressional Research Service: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/202873.pdf
As you can see from the report, the actual requirement is that the Speaker must receive a majority of votes *cast for an actual person*, so vacancies, abstentions and votes cast as “present” aren’t included in the denominator. Thus, if 29 Republican Representatives vote “present” as a protest against Boehner, Boehner would be reelected Speaker with 217 (Republican) votes for him to 188 (Democrat) votes for Pelosi, with 29 Representatives voting “present” and 1 vacancy.