Democrats willing to help GOP Speaker save job — for a price

A handful of House Democrats say they’d step in to help Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) keep his gavel in the face of a potential conservative revolt — but it wouldn’t come free.

Democrats willing to consider the matter said Johnson would first have to forge an agreement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) ensuring Democrats had a greater voice in the legislative process. In that case, they’d be willing to provide the votes to keep the Speaker in power. 

“Just like I told McCarthy: Talk to Hakeem, and there are some of us that can support you,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), referring to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was booted from his leadership post last year at the hands of disgruntled conservatives. 

“I’ll say the same thing [to Johnson].”

Cuellar is not alone among Democrats floating the idea of a Johnson rescue.

“He would have to be more willing than Kevin McCarthy was to sit down with Hakeem Jeffries and have a conversation about what it would take for us to be helpful. Kevin said to pound sand. He didn’t want the help,” said Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.). 

“We wouldn’t be offering it as an act of charity,” Kildee continued. “We would say, ‘Look, if you need Democrats to govern, then you’re going to have to take Democratic input.’”

FILE – URep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 24, 2020. Kildee announced Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, that he would be retiring next year after the end of his sixth term. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

To be sure, the odds of Johnson agreeing to such a power-sharing arrangement are minuscule, and there doesn’t seem to be an immediate threat to his gavel from the Republicans who toppled McCarthy.

Still, Johnson’s recent endorsement of a bipartisan spending agreement has infuriated a small group of conservatives who are demanding that he retract his support for the deal and draft another proposal featuring sharper cuts to federal programs.

Amid that internal GOP battle, at least two Republican firebrands — Reps. Chip Roy (Texas) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) — are already floating the possibility that conservatives would file a motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair if Johnson doesn’t satisfy their demands.

Greene criticized Roy for not ruling out a motion to remove Johnson over top-line spending deals but said she’d consider such a motion herself over U.S. aid to Ukraine, which could be a part of a larger spending package. 

“We don’t have to trade $60 billion for Ukraine for our own country’s border security,” Greene told reporters Friday in the Capitol. “That is a failing, losing strategy, and I will never support it. I’ll fight it as much as possible, even if I have to go so far to vacate the chair. And there’s others that agree with me.”

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The spending debate has put Johnson in a position roughly identical to that faced by McCarthy when he held the gavel through much of 2023: pinched between the reality of divided government — which demands compromise with Democrats to fund the government — and the pressures of conservatives demanding steep spending cuts, even if it leads to a shutdown. 

Hanging over the debate is the House rule, demanded by conservatives at the start of the current Congress, that empowers a single lawmaker to launch the process of vacating the chair. The change came back to haunt McCarthy and still inflames his GOP allies.  

“I just think the motion to vacate has been a terrible idea,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) said.

McCarthy had angered conservatives last spring when he backed a debt ceiling agreement with President Biden, and enraged them further several months later when he supported a short-term, bipartisan spending deal to prevent a government shutdown. The second deal prompted Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to take the extraordinary step of filing a motion to vacate the chair, which ultimately passed on the floor, with eight Republicans and every Democrat supporting it.

Cuellar, a centrist Blue Dog Democrat, said he’d supported McCarthy’s ouster only because the embattled former Speaker had declined to seek help from Jeffries.  

“They spoke for about 20 minutes before, the night before, and he never brought it up,” Cuellar said.

Johnson, for his part, says he’s “not concerned” about a coup attempt from his right flank.

“Look, leadership is tough. You take a lot of criticism,” he told reporters this week in the Capitol. “But remember: I am a hard-line conservative. That’s what they used to call me.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) arrives to address reporters following the last votes of the week on Friday, January 12, 2024. Johnson has been in talks with members of the House Freedom Caucus and others to discuss changing the top-line number for funding the government as the first deadline looms next Friday. (Allison Robbert)

With Republicans clinging to just the barest majority in the lower chamber, and with Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) sidelined until next month for medical treatment, it would require only three GOP lawmakers to remove Johnson from the Speakership — if all Democrats also went along.

But given the math, it would require just a small number of Democrats to cross the aisle and rescue the Speaker from McCarthy’s fate. Some Republicans are already making the argument that Democrats share the blame for the institutional chaos that followed McCarthy’s removal, and would also be culpable for the ensuing instability if Johnson suffers the same downfall.

“Part of the issue is: To make any positive changes for the House and for America, Democrats want to get paid off,” said Dusty Johnson, who heads the moderate GOP Main Street Caucus. “There have certainly been some times that I have voted for things that I thought were good, on a bipartisan basis, [and] I never asked anybody to buy me off. I just sort of felt like that’s what we’re here to do: vote for what strengthens the country. And not everyone believes that, apparently.”

Dusty Johnson declined to say if he would have voted to rescue former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) from an internal revolt, but pointed to his 2021 decision to buck GOP leaders and certify the election victory of President Biden. 

“I didn’t ask to get paid off for my Jan. 6 vote,” he said. 

Democrats were quick to reject that argument, noting that voters decided the outcome of the presidential contest, leaving Congress with the bare constitutional responsibility of formalizing the results. The Speakership, by contrast, is decided by a vote of the House, not the public, and the majority party has historically had the onus — more typically, the advantage — of filling that seat. 

“It is up to the majority to figure that out,” said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.). “It’s not up to us to save any Republican Speaker.”

Many Democrats, even those with close personal ties to the new Speaker, predicted the party would vote overwhelmingly — and likely unanimously — to remove him from power if the opportunity presents itself.

“Oh, we’d vote to vacate the chair — I think uniformly — because we disagree on everything. You can’t vote for somebody you disagree with,” said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), who calls Speaker Johnson a friend. “Now if there was a vote to say is he a good person, is he an honest person, is he a decent person, I’d certainly nominate him, because he’s a very good person, he’s a very decent person, and people who say the opposite of that don’t know him. 

“However, to vacate the chair? I’d make the motion: Vacate the chair! Get him out of there, try to get one of our guys in there who we trust,” Vargas said.

Takano expressed a similar sentiment. 

“If we had a motion to vacate, I’m voting for Speaker Jeffries,” he said. “That is just what we do.”

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) addresses reporters during a press conference on Wednesday, June 21, 2023 to introduce the Equality Act. (Greg Nash)

Still, Jeffries himself has pushed the notion of forming “a bipartisan governing coalition” to defuse the threat posed by the far-right agitators and “end the chaos in the House.” 

Even the liberal Takano acknowledged Johnson has been willing to work with Biden and other Democrats on compromises to keep the government running — and that it might be worth helping to keep him in power if a coup erupted. 

“He’s emerging as someone who’s making deals. And the test for me is: Can we count on him to stand behind his deal against the Freedom Caucus-types who are fundamentally anti-democratic,” Takano said. “Obviously, that presents an opportunity for us to come to some more bipartisan understandings.”

Emily Brooks contributed.