WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Mike Johnson begins the hard fight for his gavel, a weekslong campaign that begins Wednesday during internal Republican leadership elections in the House of Representatives and that will establish the new centers of power in Congress for a Washington dominated by the President-elect Donald Trump.
Johnson and his leadership team are all working behind the scenes to strengthen support to stay in office. Although Johnson has no serious challenger, he faces dissent within his ranks, especially from far-right conservatives and the Freedom Caucus who are withholding their votes as leverage to extract future promises.
The speaker is expected to host Trump ahead of the vote and present a united front.
“This leadership will hit the ground running to deliver on President Trump’s agenda,” Johnson said on the steps of the Capitol on Tuesday as lawmakers returned to Washington.
It’s been a remarkable political journey for Johnson, the accidental speaker who stood last, the top choice to replace ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy more than a year ago and quickly set course by running alongside Trump and leading Republicans during the election to position.
As Johnson tells it, Trump is the “coach” and he is the “quarterback” as their GOP team prepares to run the plays in the new year.
Johnson has embraced Trump’s agenda of mass deportations, tax cuts, hollowing out the federal workforce and a more muscular image of the US abroad. Together they have been working on what the speaker calls an “ambitious” 100-day agenda, hoping to avoid what he called the mistakes of Trump’s first term, when Congress was unprepared and wasted “precious time.”
“We’ll be ready on day one,” Johnson said.
While Johnson expects to lead the House of Representatives in a unified government, with Trump in the White House and Republicans seizing the majority in the Senate, the House is expected to remain closely divided even as House control remains undecided and the last races, especially in California, are still too early for a telephone conversation.
But the problems that come with a slim majority in the House of Representatives and that plagued Johnson’s first year in office as his own ranks routinely rebelled against his plans are likely to resurface in the new year, with a potential new round of chaotic management.
Johnson only needs a simple majority in the closed-door vote to win the Republican nomination to become chairman. But he will need the support of the majority of the full House, 218 votes, to actually take the gavel on January 3, when the new Congress convenes and organizes the election of its president. It took McCarthy about 15 rounds of voting during a weeklong election to win the gavel in 2023.
Trump has complicated Johnson’s problems by appealing to Republicans in the House of Representatives for his administration, further reducing their numbers. Some Republicans want the House of Representatives elections to be postponed until control of the House is fully determined.
Still, with Trump in the White House, the speaker may enjoy a period of goodwill from within his own ranks, as Republicans are eager to disrupt the norms of governing and institutionalize Trump’s second-term agenda.
“His challenge is what he has always been,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the Freedom Caucus, said of Johnson.
But he said: “With Trump at the helm, it will be easier for him to get results.”
Conservatives have debated whether to field their own candidate as a signal to Johnson as they set their own priorities, using the same tactics as with McCarthy to force the chairman to make concessions, especially on sharper cuts.
As Johnson begins the budget process for next year, including using a so-called budget reconciliation process that makes it easier within a unified government to push Trump’s agenda through the House and Senate with a simple majority vote, conservatives want him to pass those packages loaded with their own policy priorities.
It’s unlikely that Democrats, who have helped Johnson govern several times in Congress — providing the votes needed to keep the federal government funded and an effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to remove him from office – to reverse – probably won’t help him in the new year. .
“The voters voted for them,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Let’s see what they do.”
It’s not just the speaker’s election on Wednesday, but Republicans will also determine their leadership in the election.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise, also of Louisiana, and GOP Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, are expected to sail for their leadership re-elections.
The No. 4 position, chair of the House GOP conference, is most contentious with Trump’s decision to tap Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York as his ambassador to the United Nations. Her departure opens the post that is being contested by several Republican lawmakers.
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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.
