House Republicans on Nov. 15 nominated House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as speaker of the House.
The vote happened during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington as Republicans near gaining control of the House of Representatives, securing 217 of the 218 seats they need with more than a dozen races still uncalled.
During the closed-door vote, 188 Republicans voted to nominate McCarthy as speaker while 31 were opposed, The Epoch Times confirmed.
Moving into the vote, only a few positions were contested—most notably, the position of speaker of the House.
Challenges
Though he is favored to become speaker, McCarthy was challenged moving into the vote by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who has been critical of McCarthy.
On the evening of Nov. 14, Biggs confirmed that he would be opposing McCarthy.
“We have a new paradigm here, and I think the country wants a different direction from the House of Representatives,” Biggs told Newsmax. “And it’s a new world, and, yes, I’m going to be nominated tomorrow to the position of speaker of the House.”
Biggs’s declaration did not come to fruition, but the nomination is far from meaning that McCarthy is the clear pick.
The vote for speaker of the House, unlike other leadership positions in the lower chamber, must be voted for by a full canvas of the House of Representatives. Traditionally, the minority party votes unilaterally against the majority’s pick for the top House spot.
This means that to fulfill his longtime goal of gaining the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy will need to convince all but a handful of Republicans to give him their backing.
If the Nov. 15 vote is any indication, McCarthy is still far short of the 218 votes he’ll need.
Some Republicans have attributed their opposition to McCarthy to the lackluster results he delivered for the party in the midterms.
“The House ‘leadership’ play,” McCarthy critic Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said, “was to offer an eleventh-hour, tepid, and weak ‘Commitment to America,’ which few people knew about, much less cared about, and which said both everything and nothing.”
By Joseph Lord
