If Republicans take back the House in November, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) says he will back House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in the race for House Speaker.
In an interview with The Hill on Thursday, Jordan said that “everyone understands” that McCarthy would be the clear choice for the position.
“I think everyone understands that if we take [the House] back, Kevin is going to be the Speaker. The president’s been clear about that.”
When asked if Jordan would lend his support to McCarthy, he said McCarthy would deserve it if he helps leads the Republicans back to a majority.
“Yeah, when you lead the team back, I think you deserve — you earned it, so that’s understood by just about everyone.”
Republicans lost control of the lower chamber in the 2018 mid-term elections and would need to pick up around 20 seats to reclaim the majority.
It’s not expected that Republicans would be able to reclaim control of the House. An average of polls finds that 46.9% of respondents say they would support a Democratic congressional candidate while 41.2% say the same of Republicans.
But if the House did succeed in picking up enough seats, that would be quite a feat that would bolster McCarthy’s chances of winning the speakership.
Jordan ran against McCarthy to be the minority leader after the mid-terms, and lost in a 159-43 vote. However, he said he believes Republicans, even the conservative Freedom Caucus, would rally around McCarthy if they took back the majority.
“When you take back the majority, the person who’s in charge of the team taking it back, I think that the team comes together.”
Despite once being political rivals, McCarthy and Jordan have developed a working relationship.
During the House impeachment proceedings, McCarthy temporarily named Jordan to the House Intelligence Committee to cross-examine witnesses.
Meanwhile, Jordan has praised McCarthy’s leadership and ability to hold what was once a divided Republican caucus together.
“This is the most unified House Republicans have been since I’ve been in Congress,” Jordan told Politico late last year. “Kevin played a critical role in leading this effort, and it kept the team together and made us stronger than ever.”
In an interview with Politico, McCarthy says he tried to bring the party together and mend the divisions that plagued Republicans during their time in the majority.
“I wanted to unite in the minority. I didn’t want us to go back into the majority the way we were,” he said.
In a sign that McCarthy’s efforts to unite the party may have paid off, he managed to hold his members together during the House vote on two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. No Republicans voted in favor of either article during the December 18 vote.
