WASHINGTON DC – Republican Kevin McCarthy made history Tuesday as the first person to be ousted from the House speaker’s office. There is now rampant speculation on Capitol Hill about who can muster the votes to succeed him.
For now, there is no consensus on who could fill the huge vacancy in the president’s office. But while McCarthy’s core supporters are furious about what happened Tuesday, there is no shortage of ambition in the House of Representatives.
House Republicans will meet on October 11 to hold internal elections and nominate a replacement. Here are some Republicans to watch out for, as speaker candidates or battle influencers:
Steve Scalise
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana.
Scalise, 57, is the No. 2 leader of House Republicans and would be seen as a natural choice to succeed McCarthy given his experience running his GOP’s vote-counting operation and his inspiring story of surviving a mass shooting at a congressional baseball practice in 2017.
Having overcome a series of health problems related to that attack, Scalise announced in August that he had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells, and would receive treatment. The diagnosis raised questions about whether he could take on the rigorous job of speaking, but Scalise has said he feels fine and that his doctor gave him a positive prognosis. And Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who led the effort to unseat McCarthy, said Scalise is “the kind of person I see myself supporting.”
Tom Emmer
Tom Emmer, Republican of Minnesota.
Last fall, Emmer narrowly edged out two other Republicans to win the race for the third leadership spot. He is now being talked about as a possible presidential candidate, including in a Washington Post article about how some conservatives love him.
Emmer, 62, known for his dry sense of humor and colorful hockey metaphors, said he is not interested in being a speaker. But he had two successful stints leading the GOP’s House campaign operation in 2020 and 2022. And while conservative rebels have lost some GOP votes, Emmer has demonstrated his ability to corral Republicans in the big votes, despite the party’s narrow majority.
Garrett Graves and Patrick McHenry
Rep. Garret Graves, R-Louisiana, and Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-North Carolina.
McCarthy this year tapped Graves, one of his most trusted allies in Congress, to an unelected leadership position, chairing the so-called Elected Leadership Committee, and he practically camps out in the president’s office every day.
McHenry, a former deputy chief in the Scalise administration, now wields one of the most powerful committee gavels in Congress as chairman of the Financial Services Committee. The panel has jurisdiction over issues such as banking, insurance, housing, international finance and money and credit.
Both McHenry, 47, and Graves, 51, saw their influence soar even more after McCarthy tasked them in the spring with negotiating the deal with the White House to raise the debt ceiling.
Some conservatives, however, hated the trillion-dollar budget and debt deal, saying it did not go far enough to cut peak spending levels, and have privately blamed McHenry and Graves.
On Tuesday, after McCarthy was removed as president, McHenry was named president pro tempore until a new leader is elected.
Elise Stefanik
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-New York.
Stefanik is the highest-ranking Republican woman in Congress. She landed her position as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference in part because of her alliance with Donald Trump, having replaced Trump’s main foe, Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., after criticism from Cheney to the former president leading to his impeachment. As long as Trump remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party and his fundraising prowess continues, Stefanik will be a player to watch in any speaking battle, at least as an influencer.
As a potential speaker, she would hardly be a consensus candidate in the narrow Republican majority. Her abrupt U-turn in 2019 from moderate in New York to MAGA acolyte has raised eyebrows within the party, and it’s not clear she can get 218 votes. But at only 39 years old, she has the luxury of time.
Jim Jordan
Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Jordan’s rise in the House of Representatives reflects the party’s transformation in the Trump era from a business-minded country club crowd to a group of right-wing cultural warriors.
Jordan was known as a right-wing firebrand under previous GOP speakers, an opponent of bipartisan deals, a supporter of the 2013 government shutdown and the founding chairman of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus in 2015.
But in the Trump era, the party adopted his style of politics, and when Republicans took control of the House this year, McCarthy handed him the chairmanship of the powerful Judiciary Committee.
He is now an ally of the Republican leadership. Does that mean Jordan, 59, can become a speaker? That’s far from clear, especially given the skepticism that persists among pragmatists in the House Republican Conference.
But his pugnacious personality and ubiquity in conservative media make him a player any presidential candidate will likely want to keep on their good side.
Tom Cole
Tom Cole, R-Okla.
Cole, head of the influential Rules Committee, has been a consummate ally of Republican speakers: John Boehner of Ohio, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and now McCarthy.
He has a knack for evolving with the dramatic changes within the Republican Party over the past decade.
Gentle and media-friendly, Cole has earned a reputation on Capitol Hill as an elder statesman and a voice of reason in intraparty skirmishes.
He is respected by Democrats, although many were surprised to see him vote alongside Trump to unseat Joe Biden’s electors on January 6, 2021.
That vote, which Cole described as a channeling of the opinions of his Republican-leaning district, captured a fact about Cole that could make him an intriguing player in any speaker battle: his responsiveness to political incentives. But it’s not clear that Cole, 74, can unify the moderate and conservative wings of the Republican Party.
The wild cards
Byron Donalds
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla.
If Republicans can’t agree on a successor and the House descends into chaos, anything could happen. Because of that, Republican lawmakers have been throwing out names of long-shot candidates who most people in the country have never heard of but who are popular within the House Republican Conference.
They include a member of the leadership, Conference Vice Chairman Mike Johnson, R-La., former chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee; Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., current chairman of that group; Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., leader of the media-friendly Republican Main Street Caucus; and Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas.
Another wild card is conservative Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., who is black and a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. During the presidential race in January, his fellow members of the Freedom Caucus nominated Donalds, a Trump ally, to challenge McCarthy.
