Dec.30

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

House Republicans Have a Couple of Weeks to Figure Things Out

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is still working feverishly to become Speaker Kevin McCarthy. And although the House is not really in session right now (excepting 3-5 minute pro forma sessions), there were a couple of pieces of news on that front on Thursday.

To start, a sorta deadline has presented itself. If there is no speaker in place, then there can be no committees. And if there are no committees, then committee staffers cannot be paid. The first payday under the new Congress is Monday, Jan. 16. That means that if House Republicans don't get things settled by Friday, Jan. 13, payroll cannot be submitted on time and many congressional employees will not get a paycheck. Given the House Republican Conference's historical willingness to shut down the government, this may not be much of a concern for them. On the other hand, it would be bad PR, and there's a difference between sticking it to some paper pusher in Poughkeepsie versus sticking it to someone you have to work with every day. So, maybe the Republicans will indeed circle Jan. 13 on their calendars, if it comes to that.

The other bit of news is that McCarthy made his latest counteroffer on motions to vacate the chair (in other words, "let's have a vote to get rid of the speaker"). The new offer is that a motion to vacate would require 5 members. According to the moderates, this is unacceptable; the lowest they are willing to go is 50. And according to the MAGA Militia, this is unacceptable; the highest they are willing to go is 1. It can be the sign of a good compromise that nobody is happy. On the other hand, that can also be the sign of a compromise that is doomed to fail. We'll see very soon which it is.

And on that note, now that the rubber is meeting the road, we thought we'd do a rundown of unusual and/or contentious speakership elections in U.S. history, in chronological order:

• John W. Taylor, 1820 (elected after 3 days, on the 22nd ballot): Although it took place more than 200 years ago, this speakership contest may be the closest historical parallel to what's going on today. An unusually powerful and effective speaker (Henry Clay) had just stepped down, and the majority Democratic-Republican Party was divided between more moderate (mostly Northern) members and more radical (mostly Southern) members. New Yorker John Taylor (D-R) was the leader in balloting, wire-to-wire, because there were more Northerners than there were Southerners. However, what put him over the finish line was that supporters of minor candidates eventually fell in behind him. The Southern candidate, William Lowndes (D-R) of South Carolina, retained significant support to the bitter end.
  
  
• Philip P. Barbour, 1821 (elected after 2 days, on the 12th ballot): The empire struck back here, as it were. Recalling that new congresses took their seats in the next December after the election back then (in other words, 13 months), as opposed to the next January, as is the case today (in other words, 2 months), the members of the 17th Congress tossed John W. Taylor overboard in favor of a Southerner, Philip P. Barbour (D-R). Barbour was a moderate and a compromise candidate, one who received zero votes in the first round of balloting.
  
  
• John Bell, 1834 (elected after 1 day, on the 10th ballot): This was smack-dab in the middle of the transition to the second party system (Democrats vs. Whigs), following the 1810s/20s collapse of the first party system (Federalists vs. Democratic-Republicans). When the speakership election took place, all of the leading contenders were calling themselves "Jacksonians," but we're going to call them Democrats, because that is what they were. The initial leader in 1834 was someone from the Deep South, namely Richard H. Wilde (D) of Georgia. Eventually, the House decided on John Bell (D) of Tennessee, who was about as centrist as it gets.
  
  
• Robert M.T. Hunter, 1839 (elected after 3 days, on the 11th ballot): By this time, the new party alignment had largely shaken out, such that it was the majority Democratic Party vs. the minority Whig Party (joined by the even-more-minority Anti-Masonic Party). None of the folks who got votes in the first round of balloting was acceptable, and so the members eventually worked out the sort of compromise that was characteristic of the antebellum era. Robert M.T. Hunter (W) was a Southerner, but a moderate, and—interestingly—a member of tne minority party (the House was 123 D, 106 W, 11 others). There were a number of Northern Democrats who preferred a moderate from the other party over a fire-breather from their own party.
  
  
• Howell Cobb, 1849 (elected after 20 days, on the 63rd ballot): This is the scenario that Kevin McCarthy might eventually have to start hoping for. Cobb (D), of Georgia, was unacceptable to a majority of his colleagues in a closely divided Congress (113 D, 107 W, 1 other). However, there was no alternative candidate who could overcome Cobb. And so, the Georgian led on every ballot. What allowed him to be elected is that a weary House eventually agreed that a plurality of the vote was enough for victory, as opposed to a majority. Indeed, in the first round of balloting, Cobb got 103 votes, whereas in the final round, he got... 102.
  
  
• Nathaniel P. Banks, 1855 (elected after 62 days, on the 133rd ballot): This is the nightmare scenario, albeit the one that many Democrats are probably rooting for. The 1855 speakership election took place right in the midst of the transition from the second party system (again, Democrats vs. Whigs) to the third party system (Republicans vs. Democrats). And so, the 34th Congress featured three major partisan delegations: Democrats (82), Opposition (100) and Know-Nothing (51). The folks calling themselves Opposition would largely, although not universally, end up as Republicans. But that was in the future; the Republican Party had only existed for a little over a year, and the House would not have its first official Republican member until Dec. 1, 1856. Anyhow, the Opposition was the largest faction, but was not a majority and , in any case, struggled to settle on a single candidate. The Democrats, as was so commonly the case in this era, were divided between their Northern and Southern wings. The Know-Nothings refused to throw in with either side, thinking that their candidate might ultimately triumph as the "compromise" option. That was good thinking, because Nathaniel P. Banks (K-N) was indeed a member of that faction. Still, this was the second time the House had to agree to suspend the normal rules, and to allow the speaker to be elected by a plurality rather than a majority.
  
  
• William Pennington, 1859 (elected after 58 days, on the 44th ballot): Another speakership election that was caught up in the antebellum sectional strife. The leader on the first ballot was a moderate Southern Democrat, Thomas S. Bocock of Virginia. That was unacceptable to many members, including most Northern Democrats and many fire-breathing Southern Democrats. William Pennington (R), of New Jersey, was a conservative Northern Republican. After 2 months, that was good enough for a bare majority of members; he needed 117 votes and he got 117 votes.
  
  
• Champ Clark, 1917 (elected after 1 day, on the 1st ballot): The Republicans had a plurality of House seats (216), but not a majority. And so, incumbent Champ Clark (D) kept his post based on votes from 212 of the 213 Democrats in the House, plus the three Progressives, one of the two Socialists, and the one Prohibitionist.
  
  
• Frederick H. Gillett, 1923 (elected after 3 days, on the 9th ballot): Once the Civil War was over, and the Republicans vs. Democrats party alignment firmly in place, the drama of the pre-war years effectively disappeared. It may be hard to believe, but the 1923 speakership election was the only one between the Civil War and the present day to require more than one ballot. Since the 1860s, the majority party puts up its candidate, the minority party puts up its candidate, and the majority party candidate gets the job (with a couple of exceptions, see immediately above and below). In 1923, the Republicans had an overwhelming majority in the House (296 R, 130 D, 1 Socialist), and Frederick W. Gillett (R), who was the incumbent speaker, was the only plausible candidate. However, the progressive Republicans frowned on Gillett's moderate-to-conservative politics, and withheld their support until he gave in on certain concessions, particularly as regards House rules and committee seats. Along with 1820, this is the other speakership contest most likely to find a parallel in 2023.
  
  
• John Nance Garner, 1931 (elected after 1 day, on the 1st ballot): Technically, this is the last time that a party won a majority in the House, and yet did not seat a member as Speaker. However, that comes with a huge asterisk. This was at the tail end of the period in which new Congresses did not take their seats for 13 months. And in this case, during that 13 months, members were dropping like flies—a total of 14 of them died. And so, after the elections, the House was 217 R, 216 D. However, thanks to all the deaths and special elections, it was 219 D, 214 R by the time Congress convened (there were only 433 seats at that time). And all but one of the 219 Democrats voted for John Nance Garner (D) of Texas, who spent 2 years in the job before becoming Vice President of the United States. That, incidentally, makes him only one of two people to have been both Speaker of the House and President of the Senate (along with Schuyler Colfax).
  
  
• John Boehner, 2013 (elected after 1 day, on the 1st ballot): We include this one because, after 150+ years of largely uncontentious speaker elections, it could end up being the first major sign of a breakdown in party discipline. John Boehner (R) won, of course, but numerous unhappy members of his conference gave their votes to alternative candidates, including Eric Cantor, Allen West, Justin Amash, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Colin Powell. The same thing happened to Boehner again in 2015, when 10 different "alternate" Republicans got votes, and it happened to a lesser extent with Paul Ryan's (R) two speaker elections (when the Republican opposition largely coalesced around Rep. Dan Webster of Florida). It also happened with Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) last two elections; in 2019 votes went to Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL), Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Stacey Abrams, Joe Biden, John Lewis and others; and in 2021 there were votes for Duckworth and House Minority Leader-elect Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). In any event, once someone gets one or two or three votes, they enter the conversation. And if the conversation lingers for days or weeks, then that person might all of a sudden become a contender. It hasn't happened recently, but it has happened.

The lesson here, which McCarthy is certainly aware of, is that he really needs to wrap this thing up on the first ballot. If he doesn't have enough votes to put himself over the top immediately, then he'd already be in nearly uncharted territory. Again, a speakership election has only lingered past the first ballot one time in the era of Democrats vs. Republicans, and that was 100 years ago, and in a circumstance where the majority party was dominant and was sure to keep its hands on the job. So, the squabbling was really only about the relative power of the various factions within the Republican majority.

In this case, the squabbling is also about the relative power of the various factions within the Republican majority. In contrast to 1923, however, the position of the Democratic minority is not hopeless. If they can peel off just a handful of Republican votes, then they might elect a compromise candidate, as happened many times before the Civil War (and as the less-disciplined speaker elections of the past decade might presage). We remain convinced that the compromise candidate, should that come to pass, is not going to be a non-member of the House, and that it's certainly not going to be a radioactive non-member of the House, like soon-to-be-ex-representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) or Donald Trump. But a moderate Republican? Certainly possible. Note that there are no independent or third-party members of the incoming Congress so, barring a sudden change in registration (which would smell as fishy as the Santa Monica pier in summer), there is no candidate available that allows Ds to vote for a non-D without voting for an R, and that allows Rs to vote for a non-R without voting for a D. Nope, if there's going to be a compromise candidate, some members are going to have to reach across the aisle. More probably, hundreds of members. (Z)