WASHINGTON — After Jim Jordan failed for the second day in a row to unite House Republicans behind his candidacy for speaker, Northwest lawmakers on Wednesday turned their attention to other solutions to the intraparty impasse that has paralyzed Congress for over two weeks.
Jordan, a GOP hardliner from Ohio who made his name as a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump and leader of an effort to overturn the 2020 election results, lost the support of 22 Republicans when he could afford to lose only four. With even fewer votes than he had a day earlier, and with his Republican opponents standing firm amid a pressure campaign from right-wing activists, Jordan’s chances of being elected appeared to be fading.
After voting against Jordan for the second time, Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho Falls, said Republicans would likely need to pursue the temporary solution of empowering the acting speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, until the end of the year to give the party time to unite behind a permanent leader. Unless a majority of the House votes to give him more authority, McHenry can only preside over votes to choose a new speaker.
“We can come up with someone that would be acceptable to all of our conference,” Simpson said. “We just haven’t yet.”
Jordan pledged to hold another vote Thursday, but Simpson said he had no intention of changing his position. His offices in D.C. and Boise have been inundated with phone calls demanding he vote for Jordan, he said, but most of the calls aren’t from his constituents.
“The tactics are wrong, because it’s turned people the other way,” Simpson said. “The more you try to threaten me, the more I go, ‘Yeah, OK, guys, I’m going the other way.’ It’s just in my nature.”
Other GOP opponents of Jordan have faced even more severe blowback. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, who voted for Jordan on Tuesday, said in a statement that she received “credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls” after changing her vote and opposing him on Wednesday.
Rep. Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside, who has backed Jordan, said he could relate to the lawmakers who are facing that harassment. Newhouse is one of only two House Republicans to survive re-election after voting to impeach Trump for his role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I don’t think Mr. Jordan is behind that, but maybe some of his supporters are, and that’s unfortunate,” Newhouse said of the threats and harassment. “It truly is.”
When asked what Republicans would do next to choose a speaker, Newhouse said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I think we go back to the drawing board,” he added. “I think the votes are just hardening, and it’s going to get worse from here if it keeps going.”
Simpson said Republicans had circulated two proposals: one to empower McHenry only until Nov. 17, when government funding runs out, and another to elevate the temporary speaker through the end of the year. Simpson and Newhouse, who are both responsible for funding the government as members of the House Appropriations Committee, agreed that the temporary powers would need to last beyond mid-November.
The trouble for the House GOP is that empowering the temporary speaker, like electing a permanent speaker, requires virtual unanimity among their conference. Unless at least 217 of the 221 House Republicans back such a move, they may have to turn to Democrats to end the paralysis.
A bipartisan solution could theoretically take different forms. Newhouse suggested Democrats could simply support the effort to empower McHenry, saying, “Their interest in getting things back open should be just as great as ours, and they should do that without getting anything in return, other than getting back to work.”
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, a southwest Washington Democrat who frequently advocates bipartisanship as a leader of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, said that while she would consider supporting such a plan, depending on the details, “It’s frustrating that it has again come as a unilateral solution to a problem that’s going to take cooperation to fix.
“It remains to be seen if this is actually a proposal to establish a functioning body or if this is a partisan play to pin the blame on the donkey,” Gluesenkamp Pérez added, referring to the Democratic Party’s equine mascot.
Several Washington Democrats said they are open to working with Republicans to elect a speaker, but only if certain conditions are guaranteed in writing in the House rules, because they worry that any GOP speaker would be beholden to a small faction of hardliners in their conference.
“I think there’s a growing recognition around Republicans that trying to get to 217 out of 221 is not happening for them, and that maybe a better path is to work with 435,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, referring to the 435 total voting members of the House.
The details of such a plan are unclear, but the Democrats said their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, has been talking with Republicans since he laid out a proposal in a Washington Post op-ed on Oct. 6. One key idea is allowing votes on issues with broad bipartisan support — such as preventing a government shutdown and providing aid to Israel and Ukraine — even if a sizable portion of Republicans oppose them.
In that article, Jeffries wrote that a bipartisan agreement “should reflect the inescapable reality that Republicans are reliant on Democratic support to do the basic work of governing,” citing votes to raise the nation’s debt limit in June and avert a government shutdown at the end of September, which passed with more votes from Democrats than Republicans.
Even Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Seattle Democrat who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she wouldn’t rule out voting for a GOP speaker if Republicans agreed to conditions sought by Jeffries.
“I am absolutely for a bipartisan path forward, because they can’t govern and we need to keep the government open, we need to pass aid packages,” she said. “There’s a lot of work we have to do.”
Rep. Kim Schrier, a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition whose district stretches from Wenatchee to the Seattle suburbs, said Democrats understand they’re in the minority, and they only want to work with the “many reasonable Republicans” who, she said, have been sidelined by a hardline minority.
“I have had personal conversations with some of my Republican friends and I’ve told them that when we talk about a bipartisan path forward, we are 100% sincere,” Schrier said. “This is not rhetoric. It’s not blowing smoke. We want this House to be functional.”
Schrier said she understands that any Republican speaker who works with Democrats would face “tremendous pressure” from their fellow lawmakers and their voters.
“They would have to understand that they will be primaried by a MAGA Republican,” she said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. “But there are Republicans who have the backbone and fortitude to do this. And the country is counting on them.”
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, said there is “huge appetite” for a bipartisan solution among Republicans he knows and trusts, but few are willing to stick their necks out.
“They’re obviously worried about the optics and the politics, but at this point the optics and the politics are pretty bad for Republicans all around,” Smith said.
When asked about the prospect of working with Democrats to end the impasse, however, Simpson was blunt.
“I don’t see that happening,” he said.
