The House GOP will vote behind closed doors on November 15 to elect its leadership for the upcoming Congress, according to an internal memo sent to Republican staffers.
The votes will take place one day after Congress returns from its fall recess, and one week after the November 8 presidential election.
Candidates for the various offices – leader, whip, conference chair, among others — will make their pitches during a two-hour candidate forum in the house basement on Monday, November 14. It’s unclear at this point whether any of the incumbent leadership officials will be tested, but the mid-November date offers little time for potential challengers to organize against them.
Assuming Republicans keep their majority in the lower chamber — that is, if they avoid losing 30 seats next Tuesday – there also will be an internal vote for speaker. But even if Paul Ryan wins reelection inside the November 15 conference meeting, his job won’t be secured until a vote of the entire House of Representatives on the first day of the new Congress: Tuesday, January 3.
Ryan has announced his plans to pursue a full term as speaker after succeeding John Boehner last fall, but among some House conservatives there are whispers of an organized rebellion. Some of these members — and their allied outside activist groups — had previously advocated for the leadership elections to be pushed back to December after the Congress votes on a funding bill to avoid shutting down the government.
They were unsuccessful, but it’s ultimately the January 3 vote where Ryan needs their support — and depending on how many seats are lost next week, and how ugly the government funding fight becomes, the speaker could have very little margin for error. Ryan needs a majority of all votes cast by the entire House to keep the speaker’s gavel; if the GOP loses 15 to 20 seats, a small handful of conservative agitators could join the Democrats in voting for anyone else to deprive him of a majority.
One way for Ryan to potentially placate some of these members is to adjust certain rules of the conference and/or appoint more conservative members to the powerful Steering Committee. Those decisions will be made in a separate meeting on Wednesday, November 16.