House GOP taps Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana as Speaker. Is the California delegation happy?
Three weeks and four nominees later, House Republicans settled on a new Speaker Wednesday, a low-profile architect of the legal argument to overturn the results of the 2020 election for former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Mike Johnson, a four-term Louisiana Republican, gathered 220 votes from the slender GOP majority, just above the 217 needed for victory. His selection allows the House of Representatives to resume legislative work for the first time since eight GOP hardliners and all Democrats voted Oct. 3 to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield.
All 12 California Republicans got behind Johnson, 51, a constitutional law attorney first elected in 2016, the year Trump won the presidency. As speaker he is second behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the line of presidential succession.
Many members cited the urgent need to conduct business once more ahead of a mid-November deadline to fund the government and a vote on an aid package for Israel and Ukraine.
“The American people expect us to get to work,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, wrote on social media while declaring he’d vote for Johnson.
Behind closed doors Tuesday night, Republicans tried again to find a candidate palatable to both its far-right and more mainstream members after Rep. Tom Emmer’s short-lived candidacy collapsed under Trump’s opposition.
Johnson — vice chairman of the House Republican Conference and member of the House Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee — finished first in the final ballot. McCarthy, who was not a candidate, was second with 43 votes, signaling growing frustration after three weeks of disarray.
Later McCarthy, offering his “full support” on social media, called Johnson “a friend, fighter, and principled conservative who can get the job done.”
Wednesday’s floor vote was predictably partisan: All 220 Republicans present voted for Johnson. The 209 Democrats in the chamber supported Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat. One Republican and three Democrats were absent.
While Golden State Republicans fell in line behind Johnson, there was limited enthusiasm for the choice to replace fellow Californian McCarthy, a major source of fundraising and patronage. Like Calvert, they focused more on the work at hand.
A statement from Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, did not mention Johnson.
“We have a crisis at our southern border, one of our closest allies in the Middle East at war, and a deadline to fund the government in less than 30 days,” Valadao said. “Today, the House elected a Speaker so we can get back to work on these issues..”
California GOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson signaled that McCarthy was neither gone nor forgotten.
“I look forward to working with Speaker Johnson and Speaker Emeritus McCarthy to keep and grow our House seats here in California, to continue holding the failing Biden administration accountable, and to get our country back on track,” she said on a statement.
Johnson and Trump
In the wake of the 2020 election, Johnson solicited House GOP support to file an amicus brief in a long-shot Texas lawsuit seeking to throw out Electoral College votes from multiple states.
Johnson, while serving as chair of the Republican Study Committee, which offers conservative policy research for its members, said that several states had wrongly altered voting rules in response to the coronavirus pandemic. This, he said, was unconstitutional and gave reason for House Republicans to reject results.
He was one of 139 House Republicans who opposed certification of the election results on Jan. 6. Many of them relied on Johnson’s theory to support their vote.
Johnson also served on Trump’s defense team during his two impeachment trials in the Senate.
Wednesday morning, on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump declined to endorse a speaker candidate. But, he wrote, “My strong SUGGESTION is to go with the leading candidate, Mike Johnson.”
Emmer, Jordan, Scalise, McCarthy
Earlier Tuesday, Trump tanked Emmer’s chances of becoming House speaker, saying he was a “RINO” — Republican in Name Only, a term used to chastise a Republican as insufficiently conforming to party doctrine.
Emmer, a Minnesota Republican who is the House GOP’s third in command, joined the Texas brief but voted to certify the election results. His vote last year in support of gay marriage also made him less palatable to hardline conservatives.
He emerged as a presentable option after Democrats and Republicans rejected Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, on the House floor three times. Jordan became Republicans’ speaker designate after Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, dropped out when he realized he could not get the 217 votes needed.
In the interim, North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry was speaker pro tempore, whose power was limited to getting a bona fide speaker in place.
This story was originally published October 25, 2023 at 10:58 AM with the headline "House GOP taps Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana as Speaker. Is the California delegation happy?."
