Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the influential leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is poised to play a major role in deciding the next speaker if House Republicans maintain the majority in November.
Meadows holds considerable influence over a faction of more than three dozen lawmakers whose votes would be critical to ensuring the election of a Republican speaker, which requires a full House vote. Republicans can’t elect the speaker of their choice without a significant portion of the HFC.
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“Very definitely he has leverage, no question about it,” said Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., a conservative House veteran.
Meadows said members would likely stick together when deciding who next should lead the House GOP.
“I’m assuming that there’s a few of our members that won’t vote as a bloc, but I can’t imagine a lot of them not voting as a bloc,” Meadows said Wednesday.
It would not be the first time the HFC faction played an outsized role in who runs the House. The HFC’s opposition to former Speaker John Boehner pushed Boehner to retire in 2013, and the threat of another revolt in 2016 led to reports Ryan was thinking of giving up the gavel.
The HFC was also able to secure a commitment from Ryan not to bring any immigration bill to the House floor while President Barack Obama was in the White House, and to generally allow rank-and-file members to play a role in major bills, and the HFC could use its leverage to secure similar pledges this time around.
The group’s influence comes from the rule requiring a full House vote for speaker, which means Democrats vote, too. To achieve a majority, the party in charge must vote mostly in unison to ensure their candidate wins.
In 2015, Boehner was barely re-elected to the speaker’s chair after more than two dozen conservative Republicans voted for someone else.
A dozen votes went to Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla. an HFC member nominated for the position by Jones.
The group has grown more emboldened since then, and Meadows has helped to give the group a seat at the table when major bills are under negotiation. Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., who chairs the Republican Study Committee, said Tuesday that the HFC has boosted its influence.
“It would be interesting to see if that happens also with leadership,” Walker said.
The HFC influence will grow even further if Republicans maintain control of the House but with a smaller majority, which would mean HFC members make up a larger portion of the GOP conference., he added. Analysts predict the GOP will lose many seats, if not the majority.
“Especially if our numbers continue to reduce, their numbers will become more influential,” Walker said.
The search for a new speaker comes just as many HFC were left angry and frustrated by the GOP leadership’s support of the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending package that raised federal spending caps, increased the debt, and was decided primarily by the four top bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate.
Some HFC members told the Washington Examiner that Ryan’s re-election to speaker was jeopardized because of the omnibus he helped to write, and that his successor must be a fiscal spending hawk.
“That bill should have never happened,” Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., a Freedom Caucus member, said of the spending bill.
When asked whether he would back either Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy or Majority Whip Steve Scalise to take Ryan’s place, Yoho said a completely different candidate could be an option. Yoho himself won two votes for speaker in 2015.
“There is a lot of jockeying going on right now,” Yoho said.
Meadows is denying plans to run for the job himself.
“It’s highly improbable that I would ever run for any leadership position,” Meadows said.
If Republicans lose the House, they’ll be replacing Ryan with a minority leader, not a speaker.
“A lot will be shaped by what happens in November,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who was first elected in 2002, told the Washington Examiner. “There is a big difference between minority leader and speaker and we just don’t know right now.”
Al Weaver contributed to this report
