If the California lawmaker drops out of the race, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana is expected to run for the job — but it’s far from clear whether Scalise himself could get the 218 vote…
As House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has struggled to lock down the votes to become speaker, his top deputy has kept his head down.
“Steve is trying to be very supportive,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a McCarthy supporter and Nebraska Republican. “He has been public that he is supporting McCarthy. I think someday he wants to be speaker so he’s got to be tactful.” In a brief interview last month, Scalise said he wasn’t going to discuss speculation on what he might do if McCarthy doesn’t get the votes to become speaker.
But Scalise also has drawn some skepticism from the more moderate wing of the conference, including many who plan to stick with McCarthy and credit him and his fundraising prowess for powering them back to the majority for the first time in five years. “There is no reason not to vote for Steve. It is not about whether Steve is better than Kevin. It is about how are you going to run the 118th Congress if you give the gavel to Scalise and give these guys a win?” one Republican member lamented. “Steve Scalise isn’t going to have any more fun than Kevin McCarthy.”
Yet the concessions package that McCarthy has negotiated — which have been rolled into a rules proposal that needs to be adopted by the full House after the speaker’s vote — could very well fail to win the 218 votes necessary for approval if there’s another candidate for speaker. Some say they would only vote for such a deal if McCarthy is the next speaker. If another candidate emerges, they say, those concessions won’t be adopted.
“We shouldn’t be in a hurry to make a bad decision,” Good said, promising a new candidate would emerge on Tuesday. He declined to specify the member and also declined to comment about Scalise.
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