House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared to lose a seventh straight ballot for speaker on Thursday, despite offering fresh concessions to a group of Republican opponents to try to win their votes.
An official tally was still pending, but unofficial numbers showed McCarthy on track to lose.
| Total | Dem. | Rep. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 McCarthy
|
201 | 0 | 201 | Needed to win |
 Donalds
|
19 | 0 | 19 | |
 Jeffries
|
212 | 212 | 0 | |
Trump
|
1 | 0 | 1 | |
Present
|
1 | 0 | 1 |
The GOP opponents have sunk his past six attempts to get enough votes to win the job. The efforts to forge a compromise could weaken the job, if he gets it, and shows that governing the Republican-led House is going to be challenging this year, with infighting consuming what's been a simple one-ballot vote for the past hundred years.
McCarthy made history on Tuesday when he became the first majority leader in a century to fail in the first round of voting. In 1923, it took nine rounds of voting to elect a Speaker.
Kevin McCarthy came up short once again on Thursday as he lost the seventh House vote to elect a new speaker. The outcome will only increase pressure on McCarthy to end the impasse over his imperiled speakership bid, but it is unclear whether he will be able to pull it off as the situation grows increasingly dire for his future political prospects.
Even after proposing major concessions to his hardline conservative opponents late Wednesday, the California Republican has still not yet been able to lock in the 218 votes he needs to win the gavel. The House on Thursday reconvened with some Republicans, including McCarthy, trying to downplay the significance ahead of the seventh vote.
The House narrowly voted to adjourn late on Wednesday after six rounds of voting failed to result in a victor. The once-in-a-century gridlock has exposed long-simmering tensions in the Republican party and raised questions about whether Congress will be able to function with such dysfunction and discord.
Twenty Republican rebels on Wednesday rejected McCarthy and rallied instead around Byron Donalds, a Republican congressman from Florida. Some of the rebels have personal grievances with McCarthy while others have demanded rule changes that would make it easier to oust the Speaker.
After months of negotiations, it appeared as though McCarthy had capitulated to those demands, agreeing to change the rules so that just one member of the House could call a vote of no confidence. But it remained unclear whether the changes would be enough to hand McCarthy the 218 votes required to win the support of a simple majority of the chamber.
"Well, I think what you'll see today is the same until we finish everything out," McCarthy said. "Whenever you negotiate different things, nothing's agreed to until everything's agreed to. I wouldn't read anything into votes today."
Republicans took back control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. But McCarthy finds himself in such a tough position because the “red wave” he predicted did not materialise and Republicans control the chamber by a razor-thin margin, leaving him beholden to a small number of rebels.
Late on Wednesday, the Club for Growth, the ultra-low-tax group, and the Congressional Leadership Fund, a McCarthy-aligned fundraising vehicle, said they had struck a deal whereby the latter would not spend money in open Republican primaries in safe seats. The agreement was seen as a win for rightwing Republicans who have taken issue with McCarthy’s efforts to support more centrist candidates in the past.
McCarthy has been meeting with his allies on Capitol Hill and his opponents met off campus Thursday morning as House Republicans continue to try to chart a path forward.
"I think things are moving in the right direction," Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota said as he left the McCarthy meeting. "Nothing's going to come together quickly, but I think we're clearly making progress."
The longer the fight drags out, the more dire it becomes for McCarthy's future, however, as it risks further defections and a loss of confidence in the GOP leader.
Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, who has supported McCarthy through six ballots, warned of the potential for additional defections on Thursday.
Asked by CNN if he would be with McCarthy on the seventh ballot, Buck said: "If there's a deal and you know, 10 of the 20 move, I think that people stay with him. If there's no deal and we have another vote of 20, I think people are going to start (defecting)." Buck added: "Including me."
"There is a point in time that Kevin is going to lose credibility because he can't make this deal," Buck said.
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