Going down in flames

How not to fire a Speaker

We were about 30 minutes away from being done for the week. 

We were going to finish our last few votes and then most members of Congress - myself included - would head to the airport to fly home.

To be honest, it had been a pretty uneventful week. Part of me was wondering whether I’d have anything interesting to tell you about.

The reason it had been uneventful was that the vote to fire the Speaker hadn’t happened. 

The leader of that effort - a congresswoman from Georgia - had announced last week that she intended to call the vote to fire the Speaker when we all returned to D.C. this week.

But instead of calling the vote, she had taken several long meetings with the Speaker and had given him a list of demands. To me, it looked like the Speaker was trying to figure out something he could give her so she would stand down.

Which meant it seemed like her extreme tactics… had basically worked. She had threatened to fire the Speaker, but was smart enough not to call the vote, and was using that leverage to extract some concessions from him. It wasn’t clear what he was going to give her, but he was signaling that he was open to giving her something.

And that’d be a win. For her, that’d be a huge win.

Which brings us back to the moment when we were almost finished for the week.

As votes were wrapping up, I was standing in the back of the chamber listening to two congressmen discuss whether it should still be required for men to wear a tie while on the House floor.

And then we heard the congresswoman from Georgia speak into the microphone, “Mr. Speaker… I am declaring the office of Speaker of the House to be vacant.”

At which point, all heck broke loose. 

Technically, a motion to fire the Speaker is a motion to “vacate” the Speaker. So she had done it. Despite her long meetings with the Speaker - and potentially being able to claim some form of a win - she threw it away to launch a frontal attack on his very well-defended position.

The chamber’s cloakrooms - which had been full of members of Congress waiting to cast votes - emptied onto the House floor. Reporters scrambled into the gallery. A group of high school students on a field trip started glancing around, not sure what was happening but knowing it was something big.

We all listened as the congresswoman read her motion. It was a long list of grievances of everything she could think to blame the Speaker for: allowing a budget to pass with help from the minority party, fully funding the Department of Justice, not fixing the southern border - she even blamed him for expelling George Santos.

She offered this as a basic summary of her position: 

“Our elected Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, has aided and abetted the Democrats and the Biden administration in destroying our country.”

She read for about 15 minutes. The longer she went, the more unruly Congress became. Several times, the presiding member banged the gavel to restore order. The level of frustration - on both sides of the aisle - was pretty high.

And that felt like it was by design, as if she had constructed this moment to be as grating as possible. 

It was almost as if she was trying not to simply lose the vote, but to be obliterated.

Which is exactly what happened. 

As soon as she was finished, a motion to block her attempt to fire the Speaker was immediately called. That was a strategic decision by the Speaker. He knew she had just made her attempt in the most unpopular way possible and he stood his best chance by calling the vote right then.

And she went down in flames. Only 10 other members of her party voted with her. 95% of the majority party voted against her, as did 85% of the minority party - which is to say, they basically voted to save the Speaker.

Let’s assume she knew she’d lose, was fine with it, and was really just after media attention.

Even still, this was a brutal miscalculation. Sure, she’s getting plenty of media coverage, but most of it is about the extent of her loss and the minority party’s willingness to vote against her even if it meant voting to protect a Speaker they deeply oppose.

In other words, the coverage is about how she just ran smack into the limits of her political power. For someone who is constantly concerned with showing strength, it was an undeniable showing of political weakness.

One more thing on this:

After the failed vote to fire him, the Speaker waited on the House floor until just about everyone had left. Those who remained were him and the small handful of folks who had led the effort to oust him, including the congresswoman from Georgia.

To the Speaker’s credit, he spoke with them kindly. He told them he wasn’t going to carry a grudge and he hoped they could all move forward.

I have a lot of respect for that response from him. He could have gone another direction, but he chose civility and magnanimity.  

Our 12th Anniversary

Marisa and I have officially been married for 12 years. Going strong.

When I’m away from home - which I usually am, these days - we talk every night.

I’m a lucky guy, and I owe her more time than I can give right now, but I’m going to make it up to her as soon as this campaign is over.

Speaking of which:

Campaign update: New polling

Look, everyone is skeptical of polling. I get it. We’ve had some bad experiences.

But there have been several polls on our race for Attorney General, and practically all of them show that we’re in a one-point race. 

When you get this result several times over several months - and when the last Attorney General election in our state came down to 0.2% of the vote - you tend to accept it.

To me, it’s wild that in a state with 10 million people, our elections consistently come down to fewer than 50,000 votes, but that’s North Carolina. 

The truth is, this is probably going to be one of the closest races in the country.

It’s not every day that you have the ability to directly impact a 50/50 race. Folks often ask me how they can make the biggest difference in the upcoming election and I usually tell them the best thing they can do is directly support the most competitive races.

Well, that’s us. I hope you’ll take advantage of the ability to support us directly through this newsletter. If so, you can do that here (ActBlue) or here (non-ActBlue).

Both support our campaign directly - and thanks, as always.

Best,

Jeff