The NPR Politics Podcast - Can Republicans Unite Behind Steve Scalise As Speaker?

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

The conservative Louisiana Republican has now been backed by his primary rival in the race for Speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. But it is not yet clear if Scalise can martial the support of the full GOP conference and win the Speaker's gavel.This episode: campaign correspondent Sarah McCammon, political correspondent Susan Davis, and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Elena Moore. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What's good, everyone? It's me, Mr. Wood, your favorite substitute teacher, and it is a beautiful fall day here in Noonan, Georgia. I've just gotten back from the farmer's market. I'm about to settle in with a book and a second cup of tea and just enjoy what fall has to offer. This podcast was recorded at 4.50 p.m. Eastern Time, Wednesday, October 11th, 2023. It's come to our attention, by the way, that this is Wednesday. That means yesterday was Tuesday, not Thursday, like someone yours truly may have said. But I think we can reasonably predict that tomorrow will be Thursday. So sorry about that.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'm still going to be having a really good day. Hope you do, too. Enjoy the show. You know, I have lived in Georgia, and the beginning of fall in Georgia is a blessed relief for me. His voice was also so soothing. Mr. Wood could be a substitute podcast host with that voice. He really could. That smooth jazz voice. I feel like you have to be soothing to be a substitute teacher. You know, keep the kids chill. It's a hard job. It's a hard job. I appreciate it. Hey there,

it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. House Republicans have selected Steve Scalise of Louisiana as their nominee for Speaker of the House, but it's not a done deal just yet. Scalise still faces a vote before the full House. And Republicans will have to be more or less unanimous in backing Scalise for him to actually get the job. Here he is addressing reporters. Obviously, we still have work to do. We're going to have to go upstairs on the House floor and resolve this and then get the House opened again.

We have a lot of work to do. Okay, Deirdre, this election was done by a secret ballot in a closed door meeting this morning. What do you know about what went down? It took a while. I mean, it was one ballot, but it took hours before they even got to the vote. There was an attempt to change the rules inside the House Republican Conference so that any nominee for speaker would have to have 217 votes before it would go to the floor. That effort was voted down. And as soon as that was voted down by Scalise's allies, it seemed clear that Scalise had the upper hand to get the

nomination. Going into the vote, I will say there wasn't really an overwhelming favorite. Jim Jordan actually had more public endorsements. But I've learned over time, leadership races are really not about public lists, because as you said, it's a secret ballot. And not everybody sticks with who they say they're going to vote for publicly. And so Jordan initially, according to lawmakers coming out of the meeting, wasn't necessarily clear about what he was going to do after he lost. Some had the interpretation that he was urging unity, but other members said he was suggesting he wanted to support someone who had 217 votes. Quickly, though, a source close to Jordan made

it clear that he was telling his supporters to vote for Scalise. He was planning to nominate him on the House floor. And right now, Scalise and his team are trying to flip the holdouts so that he could eventually get 217 votes when they do vote on the House floor. You know, it's also interesting to me that it's a reminder that in leadership elections, these are ultimately family business. Former President Donald Trump, who was the frontrunner for the nomination, tried to affect this race. He endorsed Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan for the job. That didn't really seem to have much of an effect on the outcome here. And it's also pretty clear that it was not a resounding victory for Scalise. He secured 113

votes. We don't know which members voted for him. It was a secret ballot. Ninety-nine members voted for Jordan. This is a pretty divided conference still. And it looks like Scalise has a very long way to go before he can bring this to the floor, especially if he wants to do this in a one-and-done vote. I mean, Scalise seems like kind of an obvious choice here, right? I mean, he's already the majority leader, the number two Republican. But Sue, what else can you tell us about his record in the House? You know, I think most people and certainly many listeners of our podcast know the name Steve Scalise because he was the subject of national headlines back in 2017. He was the victim of a mass shooting that occurred at a practice for

the annual congressional baseball game. He nearly died in that attack. He spent months in the hospital. He returned to Capitol Hill with much acclaim and received a lot of national attention for his recovery story in that. But Scalise has been a political creature almost his entire life. He represents a congressional district in the New Orleans area. He came from Louisiana state politics. He served in the statehouse there. And he's been in leadership for the better part of the past decade, both in the minority and the majority. I think it would probably be safe to describe him as a pretty textbook conservative across the board, social issues, fiscal issues, foreign policy issues. He started before in leadership.

He was a leader of something called the Republican Study Committee. At that time, it was sort of a precursor to the House Freedom Caucus. It was at the time sort of the faction of conservatives. I think he has always aligned himself with the more conservative side of the party. But I would say temperamentally, he doesn't project that. If you think about Jim Jordan and Scalise as a personality contrast, Scalise is softer. He's more polite. He's more Southern. Jordan has a more pugnacious, you know, attack the libs, be more aggressive in the media personality. It's a pretty striking contrast between the two lawmakers.

But you're right. They went with the safe choice. They went with the established choice. If this was a change versus status quo election, I think it's safe to say, at least in the first round, it was a status quo election. And Scalise also has developed some relationships across the aisle. He's well-liked, even though, as Sue said, he's a staunch conservative. There are some Democrats who've gotten to know him through the baseball game tradition. One of his closest friends from the Louisiana delegation was Cedric Richman, who was a Biden White House official after Biden was elected president, and actually

defended Scalise when he was criticized for some of his reported interactions with white supremacist groups, you know, before he was elected to Congress. So I think that we may hear more about sort of his past history going forward when the nomination comes to the floor. But unlike Jordan, I think a lot of the moderate House Republicans were saying coming out of the meeting, they need a speaker that can appeal to the middle third of America. Some of them were saying that, you know, we need to cross the bridge and talk to independents who don't always agree with us on everything. And I think that some of those moderates thought that in the 2024 election, a Speaker Scalise would be less toxic than a Speaker Jordan. I mean, we've talked about the fact that this was this, it took a while to get

here. This was a narrow vote between Jordan and Scalise. I mean, was that the tipping factor there, Deirdre, the desire for somebody who could maybe talk to the middle? Or do we know? I think Scalise also, just because of his record and leadership, has a lot better of an operation, of a whip operation where he can keep tallies on where the vote was. And even though he had less declared yes votes for him going into the vote, he and his allies were very confident going into the vote this morning. And they kept saying that, you know, there's a lot of people that are undeclared, but that are supporting us and we feel good that we'll come out at the end of the day. But a lot of those allies also admit it's going to be hard to get everyone back on the same page before they go to

the House floor, and they really want to avoid another embarrassing, divisive fight on the House floor. Also, remember that the vast majority of Republicans didn't want to be here. It was just eight lawmakers that sided with Democrats to throw out Kevin McCarthy. And so I don't think that the bulk of this conference was looking for some vast upheaval. And Scalise is a known quantity for most of them. They probably have a better expectation of what kind of speaker he would be. It's a different set of responsibilities, but his established leadership style is pretty well known within the conference. Obviously, 99 Republicans voted initially for Jordan. I have to think with Jordan not on the ballot, a significant chunk of them will ultimately go to Scalise.

What we're trying to get a handle on now is how entrenched is the potential opposition? And is there a chance that he might not ultimately be able to get there? But as of right now, there's no one else that could take it from him. Okay, it's time for a quick break. We'll be back in just a second. And we're back. So we mentioned this is not a done deal. When is the full House likely to vote?

Oh, I'm going to let Deirdre answer that one. I wish I knew. I would doubt they would vote tonight. It's Wednesday, right? Because I was standing downstairs outside the Speaker Pro Tem's office, which is where Patrick McHenry is working. But Steve Scalise's office is on the third floor, one floor above, and the holdouts were coming in and out of his office. And none of them seemed very happy when they left. Lauren Boebert from Colorado voted for Jim Jordan and suggested on her way out she may vote for Chip Roy for Speaker. So Scalise can only lose essentially three House Republicans and get elected by the full House of Representatives. We do expect all Democrats to vote for Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker, so he's going to have to chip away at the holdouts.

And I'm not sure if that's a matter of hours, a matter of days. But I think there is a real concern that the longer this drags out, the House looks dysfunctional at a time where the world is seeing a major foreign policy challenge with Israel under attack by Hamas. And I thought it was interesting that Scalise, as he walked out of the election inside the conference, said the first thing he would do is put a resolution on the floor supporting Israel. I think that prior to the weekend, so many Republicans wanted to resolve this quickly out of domestic policy concerns. Republicans have a very narrow majority. They'd like to hold on to that in 2024. And projecting an image of an inability to govern is just bad for your ability to win competitive seats in Congress.

But this weekend and the events in Israel also added this international foreign policy dynamic that I also think is creating urgency. And lawmakers and aides I've talked to will say that they feel like they have this week to figure it out. You know, they have today, tomorrow to see if Scalise can get there. But there is a real interest in trying to wrap this up before the end of the week because the Senate returns from a break next week and they want to be able to move and move fast, not just on the resolution that Deirdre mentioned, but there's already talk about potentially needing an aid package to Israel or any other number of legislative items that the Biden administration might seek. And again, the House can't do any of that until they have a speaker. So it has created another layer of urgency around wrapping this up.

Whether they can actually do it by Friday, I honestly have no idea. So we've said that some of Scalise's appeal for many Republicans over Jordan might be his perception as somebody that can work across the aisle, but it sounds like that's not going to be enough to garner him Democratic votes for speaker. No, no. I mean, do we expect this to drag on in the same way that McCarthy's votes did? Not publicly. I think it could drag on behind the scenes with holdouts going in one by one to meet with Scalise and his allies and potentially Jordan trying to help flip some of those people. I think he wants to move past this divided election, according to people close to him who say he's been making calls urging people

to vote for Scalise. But in terms of on the House floor, I would be surprised if House Republicans rolled the dice and went to the floor unless they knew they had the votes. And remember, the problems that Speaker McCarthy faced are going to be the exact same problems that a potential Speaker Scalise faced. A lot of what contributed to throwing McCarthy out was anger over how he was negotiating spending bills, the stopgap resolution to keep the government funded. A potential Speaker Scalise is still going to have to try to keep the government open, is still going to have to cut deals with Democrats and a Democratic president to pass spending bills.

And there is no easy solution to that. And there really isn't any promise he can make to conservatives to hold the line on their issues that don't require some level of compromise. The same problems we were talking about on this podcast prior to throwing Kevin McCarthy out are just sitting there waiting for the next speaker. And that's where we will leave it for today. We'll be back when there's a clear outcome. But for now, I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover politics. And I'm Deird Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.