Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) was reelected as Speaker of the House Thursday afternoon in a close vote with 220 votes – exceeding the number required to become Speaker by only four votes.
Coming in second to Boehner was Minority Leader and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with 192 votes. Another 15 members abstained from voting or voted for someone else. Notably, John Boehner himself did not vote for Speaker. Pelosi unsurprisingly voted for herself.
If Boehner had not won the vote during the first round, a second round of voting would have taken place.
For a few moments, it seemed as if voting would move to a second ballot, as Boehner was several votes shy of reaching the number necessary to claim victory outright as the vote came to a close. Boehner ended up receiving 216 votes at the end of the first call to vote, however, and after the members abstaining were given a second opportunity to vote, four Republicans changed their votes, bringing Beohner’s total vote count to 220. After symbolically abstaining from voting in the initial call, Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) changed their votes to “Boehner.”
Other people receiving votes were: Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who received three votes, outgoing Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), who received two votes, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who received two votes, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who received one vote, former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker (R), who received one vote, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) received one vote, former Secretary of Defense Colin Powell, who received one vote and Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and John Lewis (D-Ala.), who received one vote each.
For days conservatives, including Ron Meyer and Celia Bigelow of American Majority Action and Matt Boyle of Breitbart News, had been claiming Boehner faced a serious challenge from the right for the speakership. After Republicans were forced to capitulate on raising taxes in the the fiscal cliff deal and Boehner refused to hold a vote on a Hurricane Sandy relief bill before the close of the 112th Congress, an overthrow of Boehner seemed more believable, as representatives from New York and New Jersey also threatened to vote against Boehner over Sandy. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) even went on national television to tell New Yorkers to stop funding House Republicans’ campaigns over the debacle.
On Wednesday afternoon the intensity of the Fire Beohner effort heightened, after popular conservative news aggregation site The Drudge Report held a poll on whether Republicans should ‘Fire Boehner’ as Speaker. Boehner lost the poll in a landslide, with 85 percent of respondents saying he should be replaced. By mid day the ‘Fire Boehner’ movement was claiming to have secret information that Boehner was planning to resign the speakership by close of business that day. But 5 pm EST came and went and nothing happened. And on Thursday, the first day of the 113th Congress, Boehner was reelected Speaker on the first ballot, with even Rep. Peter King voting yes.
Rep. David Schweikert (R-Wash.) also voted for Boehner, despite being one of four Republican members who were kicked off their high-profile committee assignments last month for getting under Boehner’s skin. The other three Republicans who were kicked off their committees – Reps. Justin Amash, Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) – were not as gracious. All three voted against Boehner. Amash voted for Labrador, Huelskamp voted for Jordan and Jones voted for Walker.
Other Republican votes against Boehner included Reps. Paul Broun (Ga.) and Louie Gohmert (Texas), who voted for West; freshman Reps. Jim Bridenstine (Okla.) and Ted Yoho (Fla.), who voted for Cantor and Rep. Steve Pearce (NM), who also voted against Cantor.
