Mike Johnson Squeaks By Speaker Election With Bare Majority

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was reelected speaker for the 119th Congress on Friday afternoon after a bare majority of 218 Republicans eventually decided to vote in his favor.

The road to reelection was tumultuous for Johnson, as many Republicans have criticized him for capitulating to Democrats and maintaining the status quo of a House enslaved by the few members in leadership.

The Christmas spending battle was the latest example of the top-down strategy, where a Democrat- and Republican-leadership-negotiated “continuing resolution” (which was really a 1,547-page omnibus with major giveaways to Democrats) angered many in the Republican caucus.

While Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said early on that he would not support Johnson for speaker on Friday, nine Republicans remained holdouts until the very end of the first ballot. Two members, Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Keith Self, R-Texas, were the final two votes to switch, putting Johnson over the top.

President-elect Donald Trump reportedly spoke to the two on the phone to encourage them to change their votes.

Nine members of a notoriously cagey majority party are more than enough to tank legislation given the razor-thin margin the Republicans hold. In the past, Johnson has turned to Democrats for votes to make up for conservative Republican detractors. He has received intense criticism from more conservative wings of his party for persistently working with Democrats instead of listening to their concerns.

It is also possible the nine holdouts were trying to send a message to Johnson, as that is the exact number of Republicans that would be needed to move forward with a motion to vacate the speaker in the proposed rules package for the new Congress, in which he would potentially suffer the same fate as ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. Congress will vote to pass the rules package on Friday as well.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who has been a critic of Johnson’s, signaled that the road ahead for the Republican majority could be rocky. While ultimately voting in favor of Johnson, he said, “There are many members beyond the three who voted for someone else who have reservations.”

Roy joined ten House Freedom Caucus colleagues in what amounts to a demand letter to leadership. The letter detailed a list of concessions to which they believe Johnson should have committed, including changing the calendar so the House will “work at least as hard as the Senate,” which would mean being in session five days a week for the first 10 weeks of the new Congress.

They also wanted Johnson to promise that any reconciliation bills reduce spending. The group also wrote that Johnson should guarantee that members of Congress can offer amendments and that bills reaching the House floor do not violate the rule requiring members to have 72 hours to read and debate a bill before it is put up for a vote. The caucus also wanted assurances that Johnson would not “rely heavily on Democrat support for passage” of bills.

“Speaker Johnson must prove he will not fail to enact President Trump’s bold agenda,” the letter continued. The Republican group demanded that Congress secure the border, cut inflationary spending, and reverse a litany of Biden-Harris policies like electric vehicle mandates and subsidizing “unhealthy foods in the food stamp program.” In addition, the House Freedom Caucus members called for several election integrity measures like “ensuring only citizens can vote, requiring voter identification, enforcing same-day voting,” and ballot security. They also demanded an “end to stock trading by members of Congress.”

In his opening speech as speaker, Johnson touted an “Americans first” agenda, pledging to cull the “totalitarian” bureaucracy, restore parental rights in education, “deport dangerous, criminal illegal aliens,” finish the border wall, and restore the military, which, under President Joe Biden, “replace[d] our military warriors with social justice warriors,” Johnson said.

Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.