McCarthy wins speakership on 15th vote after concessions to hard right

WASHINGTON – Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California won election early Saturday as House speaker in a historic five-day, 15-ballot floor fight, after giving major concessions to right-wing holdouts and weathering a dramatic late-night setback that underscored the limits of his power over the new Republican majority.

McCarthy clawed his way to victory by cutting a deal that won over a sizable contingent of ultraconservative lawmakers on the 12th and 13th votes earlier in the day, and then wearing down the remaining holdouts in a tense late-night session, ultimately winning with a bare majority, after a spectacle of arm-twisting drama on the House floor.

The protracted fight foreshadowed how difficult it would be for him to govern with an exceedingly narrow majority and an unruly hard-right faction bent on slashing spending and disrupting business in Washington. The speakership struggle that crippled the House before it had even opened its session suggested that basic tasks such as passing government funding bills or financing the federal debt would prompt epic struggles over the next two years.

Yet McCarthy, who was willing to endure vote after humiliating failed vote and give in to an escalating list of demands from his opponents to secure the post, denied that the process foretold any dysfunction.

“This is the great part,” he told reporters. “Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern.”

The floor fight dragged on for the better part of a week, the longest since 1859, and paralyzed the House, with lawmakers stripped of their security clearances because they could not be sworn in as official members of Congress until a speaker was chosen.

By Friday afternoon, McCarthy had won over 15 of the 21 Republicans who had defected, and he pressed into the night for more converts, a remarkable turnabout for a man who only days before appeared to be headed for defeat. His path was narrow until the end; only a few of the six remaining holdouts were seen as open to negotiating further.

With no votes to spare, McCarthy called two supporters back to Washington to cast critical votes in his favor: Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado and Wesley Hunt of Texas, who had returned home to be with his wife after her hospitalization for complications in the premature birth of their son this week.

As s 14th vote stretched into the night, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a stalwart holdout who had said she would never back McCarthy, cleared an obstacle to his election by voting “present.”

But just after 11 p.m. Friday night, McCarthy remained one vote short of what he needed to seal the deal. Rep.-elect Eli Crane of Arizona and Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana – the two holdouts who seemed most likely to move – both voted against him, leaving his fate in the hands of his lead tormentor, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.

Gaetz initially did not vote when his name was called. Instead, he waited until the end of the roll call to vote “present.” Republicans cheered, but it was not enough. McCarthy needed a “yes.”

McCarthy, who rarely moved from his seat over the days of votes, approached Gaetz and Boebert in their seats and appeared to be pleading with them to change their votes, his signature smile wiped from his face. At one point, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., tried to lunge at Gaetz, held back by one of his colleagues.

Gaetz refused to budge, and McCarthy’s allies moved to adjourn the House until Monday, crestfallen after a defeat they had not anticipated. But while the vote was being tallied, there appeared to be a breakthrough. Republicans quickly switched their votes to oppose the adjournment and proceeded to a 15th speaker vote, which ended well after midnight.

In the end, Crane, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Rep. Bob Good of Virginia all switched their votes to “present,” clearing the way for McCarthy to finally win the post that has so long eluded him. Gaetz again voted “present.”

The final tally was 216 for McCarthy and 212 for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, with six, all Republicans, voting “present.”

With McCarthy elected, he was set to immediately turn to swearing in the 434 members of the House to officially seat the 118th Congress. Republicans announced that they would wait until Monday to consider a package of rules for the House, which is expected to enshrine many of the compromises McCarthy made to win his post.

The concessions McCarthy agreed to, which he detailed in a party conference call early Friday, would diminish the speaker’s power considerably and make for an unwieldy environment in the House, where the slim Republican margin of control and the right-wing faction’s appetite for disarray had already promised to make it difficult to control.

“What we’re seeing is the incredibly shrinking speakership, and that’s most unfortunate for Congress,” former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said as she entered the chamber Friday afternoon.

McCarthy agreed to allow a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker, a rule that he had previously refused to accept, regarding it as tantamount to signing the death warrant for his speakership in advance.

Also part of the proposal, Republicans familiar with it said, was a commitment by the leader to give the ultraconservative faction approval over a third of the seats on the powerful Rules Committee, which controls what legislation reaches the floor and how it is debated. He also agreed to open government spending bills to a freewheeling debate in which any lawmaker could force votes on proposed changes.