The closed door, secret ballot vote by Republicans for their nomination of House Speaker is over and Kevin McCarthy has won it.
His challenger, Andy Biggs, didn’t get that many votes in the end. The vote was 188-31. But that 31 votes could make it difficult for McCarthy when the entire House votes in January.
BREAKING: McCARTHY wins GOP nomination for Speaker of the House, defeating Freedom Caucus challenger BIGGS.
Vote tally was 188-31.
— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) November 15, 2022
Here’s more from NBC News:
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday easily defeated conservative Rep. Andy Biggs to win the GOP nomination for speaker of the House.
But that was the easy part for McCarthy.
The 188-31 closed-door, secret-ballot vote illustrates what his conservative foes have been saying for the past week: McCarthy hasn’t secured the 218 Republican votes needed to win the speaker’s gavel on the House floor on Jan. 3, the first day of the new Congress.
The California Republican has his work cut out for him. He now has seven weeks to try to win over some of those recalcitrant conservatives who cast a protest vote for Biggs.
NBC News has not yet projected which party controls the House, though the NBC Decision Desk estimates that Republicans will end up with 220 seats and Democrats with 215, with a margin of error of plus or minus three seats.
If that estimate holds, it likely means that McCarthy will need to flip a number of those “no” votes to get to the magic number of 218. Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry, R-Pa., Biggs and others in the group are demanding that McCarthy make concessions on House rules and process changes before they pledge their support to him.
“Minority Leader McCarthy does not have the votes needed to become the next Speaker of the House and his speakership should not be a foregone conclusion,” Biggs said in a statement.
Biggs might be right if nearly every Republican votes the same way. The question is can McCarthy convince almost all of these 31 Republicans who voted for Biggs to vote for him in January?
And if he does, how will he do it? Will he give them bigger offices? Will he promise them top spots on committees?