The House resoundingly rejected an effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson today, but two of New Jersey’s Democratic House members didn’t go along, saying that it’s not up to them to rescue a Republican Speaker.
Greene triggered a vote today on a motion to vacate (MTV), a procedural motion that forces the House to vote on whether to retain or remove the sitting Speaker, out of anger with Johnson for putting a Ukraine aid bill on the floor last month. Before the MTV could even come up for a proper vote, though, a motion was made to table it; with Democrats and Republicans largely working together, the MTV was successfully quashed 359-43.
That’s a starkly different outcome from last fall, when a few renegade Republicans joined with the entire Democratic caucus in ousting then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. This time, though, House Democratic leaders publicly announced beforehand that they’d oppose Greene’s motion, citing Johnson’s willingness to work with them on foreign aid.
New Jersey Reps. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), however, didn’t go along with most of their Democratic colleagues. They were two of the 32 Democrats who voted against the motion to table; another seven Democrats voted “present.”
“I want the best Speaker we can to work for the people,” Watson Coleman said by way of explaining her vote. “Right now that person is Hakeem Jeffries. I don’t want Mike Johnson to be Speaker, so that’s how I voted. It’s not my job to save him.”
Eleven Republicans, all of them members of the party’s most conservative wing, also voted against tabling the motion; none of the 11 were from New Jersey.
Had Greene’s MTV been successful, the House could have been plunged into the same Speakerless chaos that it faced last October, when House Republicans struggled for three weeks to install a new Speaker before finally landing on Johnson, then a little-known lawmaker. That’s an outcome most House members from both parties very much wanted to avoid repeating.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene’s failed attempt to oust the Speaker shows us what is wrong with our politics,” Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) said on Twitter. “I work alongside some people who are more interested in being social influencers than lawmakers.”