Republicans this Wednesday proposed Steve Scalise as a candidate to lead the United States House of Representatives, a position vacant since fellow conservative Kevin McCarthy was dismissed on October 3 following a motion against him presented by his own ranks.
Scalise, “number two” on the Republican bench, and Jim Jordan, president of the Judiciary Committee, fought for the position, whom he beat after an internal vote behind closed doors by 113 votes to 99.
Scalise will still have to win the final approval of the plenary session of the Lower House, where the Republicans have 221 seats and the Democrats with 212. To win the position he will need the approval of 217 congressmen, so he must achieve the support of his supporters. from Jordan.
That vote could take place this Wednesday and Hakeem Jeffries, who currently holds the position of minority leader and who also tried last January, when McCarthy won, appears again on the Democratic bench.
Scalise, 58, representing Louisiana’s First District, faces the challenge while undergoing treatment for blood cancer, a situation that some legislators had considered was working against him.
“I think his health is a problem. I don’t want someone who is going to get worse in the job. It’s a hard job where you have to be everywhere,” Jordan supporter Ralph Norman told CNN this week.
The fight for leadership of the legislature opened after the motion to recall McCarthy, presented by radical Republican Matt Gaetz, was approved by 216 votes in favor and 210 against, leaving Patrick McHenry in interim command.
Scalise came to Congress in 2008, after having served as a state legislator in Louisiana since 1996. From 2014 to 2018 he was the deputy Republican majority leader and the minority leader from 2019 to 2022.
Until the election of a new president, the House of Representatives is effectively paralyzed, because among other things it cannot pass new legislation.
“We have a lot of work to do. (…) We must make sure that we send people around the world that the House is open and working,” Scalise said in his first appearance before the press after being nominated.
The first resolution to be approved under his eventual mandate, he stressed, will be one in support of Israel after the attack launched by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. “But obviously there are many other things pending,” he added.