Less than an hour before House lawmakers gavel in for the new Congress and elect a speaker, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said he wouldn’t be voting for Mike Johnson and made the case for picking someone else to lead their conference.
“There are qualified candidates,” Massie said Friday morning on “The Glenn Beck Program,” a conservative radio show.
Without naming names, he said there are GOP members with a large staff of maybe 50 people and experience in leadership roles who would be a better speaker than Johnson.
“They’re not swampy,” Massie said of these potential speaker candidates, “but they’ve got enough time and experience and staff to get the job done.”
A handful of House Republicans check those boxes, and their names have been floated as possible backup candidates in the event that Johnson can’t eke out the votes for speaker. They include Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Assuming full House attendance and all Democrats voting for their own party leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Johnson can only afford to lose one GOP vote and still win reelection as speaker.