January 3, 2023
We are about to witness something on Capitol Hill we haven’t seen in 100 years.
A floor fight for someone to become the next Speaker of the House.
I told you all about how the process works in this video yesterday…please go watch it.
I wanted to add a few details that I think are going to be really important today.
One — the vote for House Speaker is the first thing the brand-new house of Representatives must do. Nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing can happen without someone being selected as the speaker.
Two – the house will not function without a Speaker. It literally says so in article one of the constitution which says “the House shall choose their Speaker.” And that’s all it says. It doesn’t say how the speaker shall be chosen and it doesn’t even say exactly what the powers of the Speaker shall be. The election of a speaker really hinges on the long-standing rules of the house and the power the Speaker holds really depends on the deals the Speaker candidate makes with his or her own conference to win the votes.
I mentioned 100 years was the last time we saw a floor fight for Speaker of the House. In 1923 it took three days and nine ballots before a Speaker was elected. But that wasn’t the longest fight. The longest fight was in 1855 when it took two months and 133 ballots to finally choose the Speaker of the House.
This is all going to boil down to how long the Republican hard liners want to vote no for Kevin McCarthy and how long Kevin McCarthy is going to hang in there vote after vote.
Longest Speaker vote in history here.
History of Speaker votes with multiple ballots here.
