Kaptur weighed voting for McCarthy as speaker: Book

After the 14th vote, Kaptur “wandered over to our side of the aisle to begin talking with Mike Turner, her fellow Ohio delegation mate,” Leganski writes. 

“This isn’t right, Mike,” she said. 

Turner replied: “Marcy, if you want, you can end this right. I’ll go over to the well with you and we change your vote and this will all be over.”

As the conversation continued, Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) “swooped in like a ‘witch on a broom’ as one member later recalled, intercepting Marcy and angrily talking her out of the plan.”

“And though this type of crossover vote was unprecedented in modern times, so too was a multi-ballot contest for Speaker that appeared to have no end in sight,” Leganski reflected. 

Kaptur’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner. 

Just once since 1913 has a member of Congress voted for the opposite party’s nominee for speaker — in 2001, when James Traficant, also an Ohio Democrat, voted for Dennis Hastert. The move left him politically exiled from his caucus.

McCarthy and his team believed they were on the precipice of striking a deal with conservative holdouts the day before the first speaker vote before Matt Gaetz, Leganski said, arrived for a meeting to demand plush committee assignments and subcommittee chairmanships for the holdouts.

Gaetz also threatened that he and his House allies might elect Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as speaker if McCarthy pursued a rule change to win by plurality, something Leganski said they never seriously considered.

The demands, when presented at a conference meeting, apparently sent the McCarthy loyalists into a fit, and they took turns excoriating the Freedom Caucus. Gaetz was not a member of the group, but closely aligned to it.

“I’m on the Steering Committee, and if these holdouts don’t want to support the nominee, that’s fine. They just won’t get committee assignments. That’s the way it’ll work!” exclaimed Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), according to Leganski. Rogers later got into a viral altercation with Gaetz on the House floor. 

Rogers’s comments stopped any momentum McCarthy had toward winning, compelling lukewarm McCarthy detractors to dig their heels in against the speaker-designee. 

Leganski suggests he then knew they’d face trouble getting to 218 votes. 

The events led to four days of voting and dealmaking that came to a head with Kaptur’s potential crossover in the late hours of Jan. 6, 2023.

Kaptur, convinced not to change her vote, “dejectedly walked back to the left side of the chamber” with the House seeming likely to adjourn for the weekend, Leganski wrote.

HOUSE FREEDOM CAUCUS FACES UNCERTAIN FUTURE AS FIREBRAND MEMBERS HEAD FOR THE EXITS

Her vote was not needed in the end. Before the House could gavel out of session, Gaetz, who voted “present” on the 14th ballot, decided he would push McCarthy over the edge that night. The four remaining holdouts switched their vote to “present,” giving McCarthy 216 and a majority of votes cast.

The joy would be short-lived. Gaetz and seven other Republicans would join every Democrat in voting to remove McCarthy as speaker nine months later.