After Rep. Jim Jordan lost the first round of voting for House speaker Tuesday, he decided against taking another shot at it. Jordan said Tuesday evening that the next vote would be at 11am Eastern on Wednesday, the Washington Post reports. To become speaker, he will need the votes of at least 217 House Republicans, meaning he can only afford to lose four votes from the 221-strong conference, but 20 GOP lawmakers voted against him on Tuesday. The delay until Wednesday gives him more time to win over holdouts, though it's not clear whether he has much chance of success.
When lawmakers were still expecting a second round on Tuesday, holdout Rep. Ken Buck predicted Jordan would lose more votes. "I think that Jim will lose some more people on that vote, it'll be more than 20 that will vote against him," Buck said. When asked Tuesday evening how many rounds of voting he was willing to go through, Jordan said it would be until the House gets a speaker. He said, "We gotta have a speaker, and it can't be some deal with the Democrats," NBC News reports.
Jordan said the number of votes he received in the first round was similar to the first round of voting for Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who was elected speaker on the 15th ballot in January, only to be ousted two weeks ago. Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, McCarthy's predecessor as speaker, said Jordan apparently underestimated how many opponents he had, the AP reports. Republicans are "taking lessons on mathematics and how to count," Pelosi said after the first round of voting. (More speaker of the House stories.)
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