House Republicans have elected Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio as their minority leader, choosing the conservative firebrand to lead the party into the minority after its heavy losses in last week’s midterm elections.
Mr Jordan beat House Majority Leader Steve Scalise by 106 votes to 73 in a closed-door secret ballot on Tuesday, 10 November. He succeeds Speaker Mike Johnson as the chamber’s top Republican, after Mr Johnson opted not to seek the post.
Mr Jordan, 62, chairs the House Judiciary Committee and co-founded the House Freedom Caucus. First elected to Congress in 2006, he has been one of the most prominent conservative voices in the House for nearly two decades, and this was his third attempt at the party’s top House job.
He will take over as the leading House Republican when Democrats assume the majority in January, after flipping at least 40 seats in the elections on 3 November. Democrats are expected to hold around 253 seats to the Republicans’ 167, a swing that ended four years of Republican control of the chamber.
Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota will stay on as minority whip in the 120th Congress, giving Mr Jordan a leadership team that has worked together through the party’s years in the majority.
The election came one week after the midterm rout, in which voters punished the governing party over the cost of living and the long government shutdown. Mr Jordan vowed that Republicans would “fight for American families” over the next two years, and his allies said he would use the minority to challenge the incoming Democratic majority at every turn.
His brief will be to shield the Trump administration from Democratic-led investigations, to hold the party together after a bruising defeat, and to lay the groundwork for winning back the majority in 2028. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, is poised to become the first Black Speaker in American history.
On the same day, Senate Republicans re-elected John Thune as their leader, so both chambers’ Republican leaderships will now be led by men who must operate from the minority, a position neither party has held in the Senate and House at the same time for some years.
Mr Jordan’s elevation is also a victory for the party’s conservative wing, which has long argued that Republican leaders have been too willing to compromise with Democrats. His critics, including some within his own party, worry that his combative style will make it harder to govern from the minority.
For now, the party’s focus is on regrouping. Mr Jordan takes the reins of a diminished Republican conference, with the task of turning a heavy defeat into a platform for the next election, and of keeping a fractious caucus united behind him.
