McCarthy faces long battle for House speaker after he falls short on third vote

In a historic delay, the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, was on Tuesday facing a protracted battle to secure the speaker’s gavel after failing to win the first three votes on the opening day of the new Congress.

A fourth vote – and perhaps more, into the night – was avoided when the House adjourned, by voice vote, until noon on Wednesday.

Before that, the first two ballots to decide the next speaker saw 19 Republicans oppose McCarthy, leaving him 15 votes short of the 218 needed to win. In the third vote McCarthy lost one more supporter, intensifying concerns that he would fail to unite his caucus.

In another demoralizing sign for the new Republican majority, the Democrat Hakeem Jeffries received more votes than McCarthy on the first three ballots.

McCarthy is the first nominee for speaker in 100 years to fail to win the first vote for the gavel. A Republican political consultant from California said that it was, for McCarthy, “the most humiliating day of his political career”, a line that was picked up in newspapers across McCarthy’s home state.

McCarthy had acknowledged he was unlikely to win the speakership on the first ballot, setting the stage for a potentially lengthy delay before new members of the House could be sworn in. McCarthy suggested he was comfortable breaking the record for the longest speakership election in history, which stands at two months and 133 ballots. That vote standoff came in 1856, shortly before the US civil war.

“We may have a battle on the floor,” McCarthy told reporters. “But the battle is for the conference and the country, and that’s fine with me.”

On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump declined to say whether he would continue to endorse McCarthy for speaker, telling NBC News: “We’ll see what happens. We’ll see how it all works out.”

Trump’s comments came despite McCarthy’s loyalty to the former president, which included flying to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump soon after he left the White House, only weeks after the January 6 insurrection.

“We are done with Kevin McCarthy,” Virginia congressman Bob Good told CNN on Tuesday night, arguing that Republican votes against McCarthy would only increase in the next rounds of voting.

The Republican opposition to McCarthy has been led by members of the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-right group who have pushed for changes to chamber rules. Scott Perry, the Freedom Caucus chair, reiterated his opposition on Tuesday and accused McCarthy of failing to work in good faith with his group.

House Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy, center, is applauded by Republicans after being nominated for next speaker of the House. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

“At nearly every turn, we’ve been sidelined or resisted by McCarthy and any perceived progress has often been vague or contained loopholes that further amplified concerns as to the sincerity of the promises being made,” Perry said. “Kevin McCarthy had an opportunity to be speaker of the House. He rejected it.”

McCarthy allies lashed out against Perry and other holdouts, contending they had prioritized their own ambitions over party wellbeing.

Formally nominating McCarthy before the first vote, Elise Stefanik of New York endorsed his candidacy and delivered thinly veiled criticism of his opponents.

“No one in this body has worked harder for this Republican majority than Kevin McCarthy,” Stefanik said. “A proud conservative with a tireless work ethic, Kevin McCarthy has earned the speakership of the people’s House.”

In the first vote, a third nomination was put forward by the Arizona congressman Paul Gosar, a far-right Republican who offered his fellow Arizonan, Andy Biggs, as a conservative alternative. Of 19 Republicans who opposed McCarthy on the first ballot, 10 supported Biggs, who lost to McCarthy in the November nominating contest, 188-31.

On the second ballot, Jim Jordan, from Ohio, won the support of all 19 Republicans who opposed McCarthy in the first vote. That came after Jordan himself nominated McCarthy, in an attempted show of unity. In his speech, Jordan outlined Republicans’ agenda and urged colleagues to set aside differences.

“We need to rally around him [and] come together,” Jordan said.

But McCarthy actually lost support on the third ballot. Byron Donalds of Florida flipped from McCarthy to Jordan, raising the number of Republican detractors to 20.

“The reality is … Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the votes,” Donalds said on Twitter. “Our conference needs to recess and huddle and find someone or work out the next steps … but these continuous votes aren’t working for anyone.”

A Tuesday conference meeting failed to resolve issues between McCarthy and his detractors. Matt Gaetz, one of McCarthy’s most vocal critics, said those withholding support were threatened with being removed from committees.

“If you want to drain the swamp, you cannot put the biggest alligator in charge of the exercise,” Gaetz told reporters. “I’m a Florida man, and I know of what I speak.”

Gaetz and his colleagues showed no sign of relenting. Their opposition raised the prospect of the first lengthy floor fight over the House speakership in 100 years. The last such spectacle unfolded in 1923.

“We’re not going to back down until we get in a room and we decide how we’ll be able to stand up and fight for the American people, no matter who the speaker is,” Chip Roy of Texas told Fox News. “I’m not blinking.”

The second-ranking Republican, Louisiana representative Steve Scalise, is seen as one potential compromise choice, but so far he has focused on rallying support behind McCarthy.

Democrats rallied behind their leader, Jeffries.

“He does not bend a knee to anyone who would seek to undermine our democracy,” Pete Aguilar of California, the third-ranking Democrat, said in a speech nominating Jeffries for speaker.

The Senate convened without incident. Democrats welcomed two new members including John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who helped his party secure a 51-49 majority.

In his first floor remarks of the new Congress, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, commended his counterpart, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, on becoming the chamber’s longest-serving party leader.

As an era of divided government begins, after two years of Democratic control, Schumer acknowledged the legislative path “won’t be easy” but was nevertheless optimistic.

“After everything we’ve accomplished in an evenly divided Senate and a narrowly divided House,” he said, “there’s no reason both sides can’t keep working together for the good of our country, our beloved country.”