Power struggles and ideological divergences within the Republican Party have complicated the election of the group's leader, Kevin McCarthy, as the new speaker of the House of Representatives.
The conservatives prevailed in this body by a tight majority of 222 seats compared to 213 for the Democrats. Thus, the candidate needed 218 votes (half plus one of the 435 seats in total) to be elected on the first ballot if all the parliamentarians turned up. But he won only 203 of the 434 lawmakers finally present: nine fewer votes than the Democratic challenger and leader of the new House minority, Hakeem Jeffries, who is not expected to take office.
Five of the most extreme members of the Republican formation announced weeks ago that they would vote against McCarthy, and another nine suggested it this past weekend when they considered the assignments that he announced to them on Sunday in response to their demands on charges and more belligerent policies against the Biden Administration.
The drama was therefore served a priori, since it seemed unlikely that McCarthy's candidacy would prosper in that first vote. It was to be the first time this had happened in a hundred years. And it was.
The Republicans thus suffer a first and early stumble after having reaped one of the worst results of an opposition party in a mid-term election. The conservatives lost the legislative elections in the Senate, whose control the Democrats therefore maintain, and won them in the House with one of the slimmest advantages in recent memory.
The rules of the Chamber for the election of the so-called speaker require that the candidate obtain the majority of the votes that are nominally issued with mention of a name. Absentees do not count, nor are attendees who choose to say "present", the equivalent of abstention, counted. In this way, the threshold of votes necessary to reach a majority can be lowered.
But despite this possibility of salvation, McCarthy's failure on the first ballot began to become more than likely as soon as the Republican alternative candidate representing part of the dissidents, Andy Biggs, received the first votes: more than half a dozen when the process was half over; that is to say, a figure much higher than the number of negative votes of his that McCarthy could afford with a maximum quorum or close to one hundred percent in the vote.
All the candidates to preside over the House of Representatives since 1923 had been elected on the first ballot. Exactly one hundred years ago, the Republican Frederick Gillett needed nine votes to, with 215 votes, seize the gavel with which the speakers open and close the sessions, or call to order.
There are, however, precedents with more morbidity. For example, in 1855 it took two months and 133 votes to elect Nathaniel Banks president, whom the Republicans supported in the bitter political struggle that preceded the Civil War.
The vote that McCarthy lost closed with 203 votes in his favour, 212 for the Democrat and new leader of the Democrats in the House to replace Nancy Pelosi, the New York representative Hakeem Jeffrey, 10 for the dissenting Republican Andy Biggs, and 9 for "other" names.
Now, and in accordance with the procedure established by tradition, the 434 active representatives of the House (there is a vacancy in the Democratic bench) will hold new votes until a candidate obtains the majority of votes among those who go to vote and is do in favor of a specific applicant: a system defined with practice, in the absence of more specific constitutional rules.
The open crisis with the failed vote on Tuesday, with which Congress enters unknown territory -at least for the living-, can last days or weeks; It obviously depends on the progress of the negotiations between the parliamentarians; in principle, between McCarthy and his people. But nothing is ruled out now.
