Speaker of the House vote and message

Conservative hardliners nominated Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio To be the Speaker of the House on Tuesday During the second and third votes of the chamber A floor fight for House leadership.

Jordan, in an attempt to show party unity, nominated GOP Chairman Kevin McCarthy in the runoff. Speaking on the House floor Tuesday, Jordan said the differences among Republican lawmakers “pale in comparison” to the differences between Republicans and Democrats.

“We’ve got to rally around him,” Jordan said of McCarthy.

The first order of business for the 118th Congress is to elect a new speaker, but McCarthy is stonewalled by a conservative hardliner. With the GOP holding only a narrow majority, those hardliners hold more sway in the convention and have already denied McCarthy the votes he needs to win in the early rounds.

Representative of Florida. Matt Gaetz nominated Jordan in the runoff, where the Ohio Republican received 19 votes. Republican Representative Chip Roy of Texas, who had already voted twice against McCarthy, nominated Jordan for speaker in the third round, where he received 20 votes.

Jordan’s nomination by another member marks a new layer of leadership drama as Republicans take control of the House.

Important things to know about Jordan: Jordan is a high-profile conservative and founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, serving as its first chair from 2015 to 2017 and as its vice chair since 2017. He was the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee from 2019 to 2020. He vacated that position to become the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, where he is He is expected to become the leader In the newly GOP-run House.

Jordan is a close ally of former President Donald Trump. Following Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, Jordan supported lawsuits to invalidate the election results after Trump refused to concede when he presented claims of election fraud. The Electoral College voted not to certify the results.