The three candidates running to be House speaker will pitch themselves Tuesday to key conservative lawmakers who together hold the power to decide who will replace Speaker John Boehner.
The groups will hold a joint candidates forum after floor votes conclude Tuesday evening, two days before the House GOP will pick a nominee for speaker from its ranks. The three declared candidates — Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla. — will all attend the forum, which is not open to the public, spokesman Jon Meadows said.
“Chaffetz, McCarthy and Webster will address members of the various conservative caucuses regarding their candidacy and vision for the House in advancing a conservative agenda,” Meadows said. “Speaker candidates will be recognized for a brief opening statement and then respond to questions from members.”
The groups sponsoring the forum are the Tea Party Caucus, the House Freedom Caucus, the Conservative Opportunity Society and the House Liberty Caucus. The event will be held at the Capitol Hill Club, just a block away from the Capitol.
The event is critical because the next speaker will have to win 218 votes on the House floor on Oct. 29.
For Republicans, that means the candidate they put on the floor for a bipartisan vote cannot lose the support of more than 29 of the 248 Republican members. Thus far, none of the three candidates appear to have locked up 218 votes.
At least one of the four conservative groups, the House Freedom Caucus, comprises more than 30 members who said they plan to vote together, which would give them the numbers needed to sink a candidate they don’t like. Conservatives are particularly skeptical of McCarthy, and have clashed with him frequently in his role as number-two Republican on the leadership team.
McCarthy angered conservatives further last week with an on-air flub that made the House Benghazi Committee appear to be a panel designed to hurt the poll numbers of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. He walked back the comments later, but it hurt his image as a leader.
“Conservatives want to know how many gaffes per month they can expect of a Speaker McCarthy,” one aide to a GOP conservative told the Washington Examiner.
But Chaffetz, who announced his candidacy on Sunday and who many see as a viable alternative, has his own problems with conservatives.
As Oversight panel chairman, he tried to remove Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina conservative, from his post atop the Oversight subcommittee on government operations. Chaffetz reversed his decision after panel members backed Meadows.
“His story is he was doing what the speaker wanted,” one skeptical conservative lawmaker told the Examiner. “But Jason went after Mark Meadows.”
The conservative Heritage Action group said Monday that they were unsatisfied with Chaffetz’s “vague commitment” to enforcing spending caps and reducing the deficit. Chaffetz also supports an Internet sales tax, which most conservatives oppose.
Webster, a former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and former president of the state Senate, is the candidate most aligned politically with conservatives. But he’s not likely to garner anywhere near enough votes to win on the House floor, or even a majority of the conference on Thursday when House Republicans will pick their nominee.
The Oct. 8 winner needs to garner only 125 votes, a far lower threshold that could yield a winner who will have to spend the remaining weeks scrambling for the support needed to win 218 on Oct. 29. The conservative faction will be the hardest to win.
“The one who is able to get the 218 can probably demonstrate the ability to lead,” Tea Party Caucus Chairman Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas, told the Examiner.
