For Missouri’s two new representatives, first week in Congress goes off the rails

Freshman Republican Mark Alford’s first day in Congress was supposed to be different.

He was supposed to cast his vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy to become the 55th speaker of the U.S. House and leader of the House Republicans. He was supposed to be sworn in as the new representative from the 4th District of Missouri and then go out for dinner with the friends and family who came to Washington to celebrate his big day.

It did not go as planned.

“I know we made history today,” Alford, of Lake Winnebago, said on Tuesday night after the House held three failed speaker votes. “That’s okay with me. I think at the end of the day, whenever that day is, we will end up with Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House.”

That day wasn’t Tuesday. It wasn’t Wednesday. It may not be Thursday.

Democratic leaders advised their members to be prepared to stay in the Capitol until a speaker is elected as a group of 20 of the more conservative House Republicans locked horns with McCarthy and prevented him from winning six consecutive speaker elections.

Because House rules say the vote for speaker has to occur before members can be sworn in, none of those elected to the 118th Congress have become official House members. That’s created a kind of congressional purgatory for the past two days, especially for the two new members from Missouri, who are still getting their bearings.

Freshman Republican Eric Burlison, of Ozark, said between the fourth and fifth vote on Wednesday that he didn’t anticipate that it would be so hard for Republicans to elect a speaker.

“I just want to see us get to a point where we’re passing conservative legislation and stopping all the bad stuff,” Burlison said.

It isn’t the first time that Burlison has witnessed legislative gridlock. As a state senator in Jefferson City, Burlison was part of the Republican “Conservative Caucus,” which helped grind the congressional redistricting process to a halt for months last legislative session. Burlison said he was known in the caucus as someone who would only take a bold stand if there was an achievable outcome.

“They may have an achievable outcome,” Burlison said. “I just haven’t been made aware of it.”

In the meantime, frustration among members occasionally boiled over into outright hostility. In the sixth vote, when Rep. Scott Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, was nominating Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, for speaker, one Democrat yelled out that he was a “traitor.” Perry was part of the movement to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat who is about to enter his tenth term in Congress, said he was concerned that the dysfunction could be exploited by foreign countries and that it tells the American people that the U.S. House isn’t a necessary institution.

“Many of the members are standing up saying the house is broken,” Cleaver said. “And I don’t know if this is intentional self-blindness, but they are declaring something that they are creating the claims.”

While many Republicans had predicted that they would win control of the House in a landslide in November’s elections, they were only able to secure a narrow, four vote majority. This week’s vote is the first time members of the conservative wing of their party have flexed their new-found power in the Chamber.

A number of Republicans standing steady behind McCarthy expressed frustration at the 20 members who were blocking him from becoming Speaker. Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska, said he felt the demands of the members opposing McCarthy weren’t reasonable and that he already felt McCarthy had gone too far to try and appease them.

“This is a group that does better in the minority,” Bacon said. “They like to vote no and say no.”

Cleaver pointed out that Democrats had a small majority in 2020, but were able to pass several pieces of legislation to address issues like climate change, the country’s infrastructure needs and protections for same-sex marriage. He said the dysfunctional vote indicates it will be much more difficult for Republicans.

“It says that the Republicans are going to have much, much greater difficulty accomplishing anything,” Cleaver said.

Republicans weren’t ready to concede that it will make legislating more difficult. Instead, they painted it as democracy in action and an open debate on the House floor. On Tuesday night, Alford called the discussion “healthy.”

“I think you’ll see it’s going to lead to an even stronger party and a stronger House of Representatives at the end of the day when Kevin McCarthy is speaker,” Alford said.

The two new members from Missouri were following the lead of their more senior Republicans from the state — all of them voted for McCarthy in every vote. Rep. Jason Smith, a Republican from Salem, is a McCarthy ally and currently competing to become ranking member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Throughout Wednesday, he could be seen engaged in discussions with members of leadership and those leading the anti-McCarthy faction on the House floor.

Still, by the middle of the day, Burlison appeared slightly worn out by the repeated votes. He said it was an ongoing thought process about whether he switches his vote.

“There comes a point though, where you wonder if it’s clear that there’s no viable path,” Burlison said. “At some point you got to figure out where there is a path.”