How Wisconsin’s GOP House Members Explained Speaker Fight

Mike Johnson (Public Domain).

Wisconsin’s Republican U.S. House members generally kept low profiles during their party’s three-week public struggle to elect a House speaker. None of them joined the coup that ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy, but one struck a profile-in-courage pose by going to Israel.

The six have an average of less than five years in the House. So they let more senior GOP tribal elders fight over the job of speaker. They backed each one tentatively endorsed by the party caucus, who were then defeated in floor votes or withdrew once they determined they couldn’t be elected.

Last Wednesday, five of the six Wisconsin Republicans finally got a chance to vote for a winner – Speaker Mike Johnson – and welcome the end of the search.

But what the six said and did between Oct. 3, when eight Republicans and all Democrats removed McCarthy, and Wednesday is interesting.

Two of the junior Republicans – Bryan Steil, elected in 2018, and Mike Gallagher, elected in 2016 – play key roles, although they are not top Republican leaders. Steil chairs the House Administration Committee; Gallagher leads a committee monitoring U.S-China relations.

In a Beloit Daily News interview, Steil said he was worried by the historical ouster of McCarthy.

“I was concerned at the time that it would bring forth chaos,” Steil said about that vote. “I am frustrated that the motion passed. These people didn’t have a plan on the back end.”

In an interview on WISN-TV’s Upfront show, Steil added, “This isn’t easy, but sometimes democracy is messy.”

Gallagher reminded Capitol reporters that he nominated McCarthy as speaker less than a year ago.

“The messiness of this institution is a feature, not a bug,” Gallagher added. “In a big-tent party like the Republican Party, it’s healthy to have disagreements. But there’s a point at which the disagreement becomes dysfunction and paralysis, and we’re going to reach that point if we continue this much longer.”

First-term Congressman Derrick Van Orden left for at-war Israel and missed the vote electing Johnson speaker.

“Currently, as I write this piece, there is no path for a new speaker, and Congress remains rudderless and in disarray. There is no sense of urgency to elect a speaker despite the many challenges we face at home,” said Van Orden.

Van Orden added; “As a retired Navy SEAL and combat medic, I am uniquely qualified to objectively ascertain the ground truth and bring that information back to Congress where I can hopefully increase the sense of urgency for my colleagues of both parties to put aside their petty personal and significant political differences and act in the best interest of America and our beleaguered allies.”

In a Wisconsin Public Television interview on Oct. 20, Congressman Glenn Grothman blamed the failure of veteran Republicans to teach new legislators this rule of governing: Whoever wins a vote for speaker in the closed Republican conference meeting, you must support in a House floor vote.

Grothman said seven of the eight Republicans who ousted McCarthy were elected after 2014.  “We’ve done a really bad job of educating the freshmen on the idea of team play.”

Congressman Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany were among the 187 House Republicans who voted against certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win over former President Donald Trump. Speaker Johnson also voted against certifying Biden’s win.

In an Oct. 22 interview on WISN-TV’s UpFront show, Fitzgerald said, “It’s never easy …  when you’ve got such a tight margin. In this conference, because of the diversity of people that have been elected, it’s caused some small fractures that have gotten worse in the last couple of weeks because there’s so much pressure on this conference to actually elect a speaker.”

In an Oct. 13 interview on the DrydenWire.com, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, Tiffany said the word “crisis” is overused in Washington, although he said there are true crises in Israel, on the nation’s southern border with illegal immigrants and with record numbers of fentanyl deaths in the U.S.

“Us not having a speaker? That’s not a crisis, at this point,” Tiffany said then. “We just need to honor the process and get someone named as speaker.”

Pressed by DrydenWire founder Ben Dryden, Tiffany predicted a speaker would be elected by Oct. 15.

Tiffany was off by 10 days.

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwaters@gmal.com