2023-10-25 03:26:00
The Republican Party chose legislator Mike Johnson as its candidate to preside over the House of Representatives. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
The Republicans of the United States House of Representatives chose legislator Mike Johnson on Tuesday as their fifth nominee for speaker of the body, hours following the previous candidate, Tom Emmer, withdrew from the race for not counting with sufficient support from his party.
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Johnson, from Louisiana, will face a closed-door election this Wednesday to see if he can achieve the 217 votes necessary to emerge victorious in the chamber.
The Republican was elected with 85 votes in favor, well ahead of the second, Byron Donalds, with 32; He is followed by Mark Green with 23 votes, Roger Williams with 21 and Chuck Fleischmann with ten, according to the American network CNN.
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Additionally, 34 extra votes were cast for other people who were not included on the list of candidates.
He is the fifth nominee for president of the House of Representatives proposed by the Republicans following the beginning of the legislature, following their first candidate, Kevin McCarthy, was expelled from office following a motion of censure supported by congressmen from the most radical wing of the party. .
Mike Johnson is the fifth nominee for speaker of the House of Representatives proposed by Republicans following the start of the legislature. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
The Republican majority in the House does not guarantee that Johnson will have the necessary votes for his election, as the Republican Party has shown a lack of consensus over the last three weeks when choosing McCarthy’s successor.
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Johnson, a lawyer specializing in constitutional issues, had united Republicans around Trump’s legal effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The conservatives have a very slim majority in the House of 221 seats compared to the Democrats’ 212, which forces them to have the support of practically all their members in the chamber to elect the new “speaker.”
Republican Tom Emmer, 62, had been nominated four hours earlier in an internal election of the Republican parliamentary group in which he beat eight other candidates. However, criticism quickly surfaced from the most radical members of the party who consider that he is not conservative enough.
The decisive blow was given by former President Donald Trump, who has great influence over Republicans and who warned on social networks that electing Emmer would be “a terrible mistake.”
Republican Tom Emmer was nominated four hours earlier in an internal election of the Republican parliamentary group in which he beat eight other candidates. (EFE/ Will Oliver)
”I have many wonderful friends who want to preside over the House and some of them are great warriors. But fake Republican Tom Emmer, whom I don’t know well, is not one of them,” the former president said.
Another candidate, Jim Jordan, withdrew from the race on Friday following losing three votes in the chamber in which several legislators from his own ranks turned their backs on him.
Without a leader, the House of Representatives cannot agree to President Joe Biden’s request to unlock more than $100 billion in emergency funds, especially for military aid for Israel and Ukraine.
“This is probably one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever seen,” Republican Foreign Relations Committee leader Michael McCaul told > on Sunday.
“Because if we don’t have a speaker of the House, we can’t govern. And with each passing day, we are basically closed as a Government,” he added.
Everything seems to indicate that Johnson will be affected by the same internal divisions that have left the party unable to unite around a leader.
(With information from EFE and Europa Press)
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