A day after calling Donald Trump’s support for Kevin McCarthy to be speaker of the House “sad,” Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) voted for the former president and current White House candidate on the seventh and eighth ballots as lawmakers struggled to break a three-day deadlock.
McCarthy (R-Calif.) has been stymied in his bid to win the gavel as some 20 far-right GOPers have voted for fellow members of the Freedom Caucus in an effort to wrangle concessions from the more moderate candidate.
The Constitution does not state that the speaker of the House must be a current lawmaker, and anyone in Congress can nominate a candidate for the parliamentary leadership position. However, a non-lawmaker has never been elevated to the position in the country’s history.
Gaetz, 40, is leading the effort to oust McCarthy, and the outspoken Trump supporter’s vote for the former president was at odds with the embattled 76-year-old ex-president’s efforts to back McCarthy, underscoring the party’s ongoing identify crisis.
Trump’s support for Kevin McCarthy had not influenced former loyalists in the right-wing Freedom Party. Bloomberg via Getty ImagesRep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a Freedom Caucus member who is a supporter of both Trump and McCarthy’s speaker bid, was visibly amused by Gaetz’s vote on the seventh ballot Thursday afternoon. She was photographed smiling broadly, laughing and clapping as she sat next to the Florida man on the House floor.
Gaetz dropped the bit on the ninth ballot, instead opting to back Rep.-elect Kevin Hern (R-Okla.).
Despite McCarthy’s reported willingness to make concessions to his conservative detractors, the lawmaker lost his seventh, eighth and ninth bids to lead the House as the historic dissent continued for a third day, preventing the 118th Congress from getting to work.
On the seventh ballot, the other 19 rebel lawmakers again cast their votes for Rep.-elect Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), a little-known sophomore legislator who was nominated by fellow Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy (R-Texas) Wednesday.
The historic nomination drew applause from both sides of the aisle after Roy pointed out that it marked the first time two black men were being considered for the leadership role.
Rep.-elect Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens, has continued to lead the balloting amid the mutiny despite his party’s minority status.
