TEXAS, USA — The Texas Tribune contributed to this article
All three Texans who’d been voting against Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker flipped in the 12th round of voting Friday.
However, McCarthy still came up short of the votes to win the gavel during the first vote of the day Friday. Enough GOP members voted against McCarthy, denying him a majority — but the vote represented the most movement from his opponents since voting started Tuesday. It was the first vote where he won a plurality of votes, besting the Democrats’ choice, Hakeem Jeffries.
One holdout, Congressman-elect Keith Self, of Collin County, is among those who flipped. Earlier this week, he explained to WFAA reporter/anchor Teresa Woodward why he was against voting for McCarthy.
Self said over the course of the last couple of months since his election, he's been proud of the new rules members have helped develop to govern House processes.
He believes those rules would change the power structure in Congress, giving more authority to members who aren’t chairs of committees or in positions of leadership.
“What I actually heard was – if you don’t vote for Kevin, some of these rules will go away,” Self told WFAA. “That’s not encouraging to me.”
So, he joined Texas Republicans Chip Roy, of Austin, and Michael Cloud, of Corpus Christi, in voting for congressman Jim Jordan, of Ohio, for speaker.
“The reason I voted for Jim Jordan is because I believe he’s the man with the vision,” Self said. “He’s the man with the charisma, he’s the man with the plan for this Congress going forward.”
Roy, Cloud and Self presented themselves as good-faith negotiators who had no personal beef with McCarthy and appeared open to figuring out a leadership deal from the get-go.
After McCarthy agreed to many of the holdouts’ demands, including the reinstatement of a longstanding House rule that would allow any single member to call a vote to oust him from office, several colleagues flipped.
When Self cast his vote, he declared to the packed chamber, “We are making progress.” The three members each received thunderous applause and standing ovations from their Republican peers as they cast their votes. In the end, 14 of the 20 dissenting Republicans switched to vote for McCarthy.
“It has become clear to me that a couple of individuals are simply obstructionists, more interested in self-promotion than restoring the Republic,” Self said in a statement following his vote.
Roy and Self noted that they aren’t done negotiating, but their votes were a sign of McCarthy’s honest efforts. Republican members had a conference call Friday morning to flesh out where they all stood.
While McCarthy indicated he had a path forward with Roy, the Austin Republican tweeted that “any agreement will take us ALL. We are making progress… but don’t let the sharks confuse the ongoing engagement.”