Republicans representing New York congressional districts won by President Joe Biden in 2020 are splintering on Rep. Jim Jordan’s bid for speaker.
Three of the six Republicans — Reps. Marc Molinaro, Brandon Williams, and George Santos — have stood behind the Ohioan through the first two rounds of voting. The other three — Reps. Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito, and Nick LaLota — have opted to back other candidates.
D’Esposito and LaLota, both Long Islanders, voted for former Suffolk County congressman and GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin instead. LaLota currently represents Zeldin’s old district.
They say their decision to not back Jordan is rooted in policy. D’Esposito raised concerns over Jordan’s past votes opposing aid for victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy, plus his recent vote against a short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.
“That matters to people back home, we want to keep the government open,” D’Esposito said Wednesday.
They also would like to see commitments to lift the cap on the state and local tax deduction (or SALT), Bloomberg reports. Jordan floated doubling the SALT cap to $20,000, but LaLota says he rejected that “right away,” calling the proposal a “pittance.”
LaLota said talks have continued with Jordan and his team — but he has yet to see “results.”
“Despite there being two Zoom calls, two in-person meetings and a nice group meeting yesterday, we’ve had zero results on these very important issues,” he said. “When there’s improvements, there might be a better lean towards ‘yes.’”
Lawler, meanwhile, backed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy on both ballots, looking to return him to the top job.
Lawler previously stressed that “loyalty” would be a key measure of how he evaluates speaker candidates. He wanted to know, he said, what the candidates did to support McCarthy in the lead up to his ouster.
As for the swing district Republicans backing Jordan, Democrats are already pouncing. They are aiming to tie those lawmakers to Jordan, a fierce Donald Trump ally who helped to lead the effort to object to the 2020 election results.
Last week, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries labeled Jordan “the chairman of the chaos caucus, a defender in a dangerous way of dysfunction and an extremist extraordinaire.”
Santos has unapologetically backed Jordan since early on, calling him the “man for the job.”
On Wednesday, Molinaro — who told reporters last week that people “don’t give a s--t who the speaker of the House is, they care if we are functioning and delivering for them” — stood by his decision to vote for Jordan, even after Jordan failed again on the second ballot.
“I made a choice because I felt two very important things: We need to unite the conference and we need to govern. I gave that opportunity,” he said. “But at this point, very clearly, we need to govern. And if we as a conference can’t coalesce around a singular candidate, we at the very least coalesce around the responsibility to govern.”
Molinaro said temporarily empowering the caretaker speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, is an appropriate next step so the House can start advancing legislation again.
Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, who represents New York’s other competitive congressional district, said he “appreciates” the New York Republicans who did not vote for Jordan. But also argued that is only a start.
“Not supporting a known insurrectionist, who is also incredibly incompetent, and nasty and divisive — that should just be what every member did,” he said. “You would think in a moment like this, we’d see some moderate step forward, not just in an oppositional way to block a bad candidate, but to actually say, ‘This is what the American people want: a bipartisan way forward.’”