Tea Party groups are making a late push to oust Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
With about two hours to go before the 12:45 p.m. vote on Tuesday, FreedomWorks said that its members had made over 11,000 phone calls to congressional offices urging members to vote against Boehner and sent more than 18,700 messages online in the last 72 hours.
Another group, Tea Party Patriots, said on Twitter that it had facilitated close to 4,000 calls to members and urged its followers to make more.
FreedomWorks was also aggressively pushing the campaign against Boehner on social media as the vote got closer.
Other groups on the right were mostly quiet in advance of the vote. Heritage Action — the organizing arm of the Heritage Foundation — had only one tweet on the vote. They noted that it would occur at 12:45 p.m., “for those following today.”
Conservatives are hoping to marshal the votes needed to cost Boehner the speakership. They argue House Republicans need a leader who will push back harder than Boehner has against the Obama administration.
The right has been particularly rankled by Boehner’s recent decision not to take more aggressive action to block the implementation of Obama’s executive order on immigration. Instead, House Republicans passed a symbolic bill that said that Obama did not have the authority to bypass Congress.
Three congressmen — Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) and Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) — are running against Boehner, who was chosen by the conference for another term late last year.
Fifteen members have committed to opposing Boehner. But the absence of several members for the funeral of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo may make it harder for Boehner’s opponents to whip all of the necessary votes against him.