It…hasn’t exactly been a great month for effective governance in Washington D.C.
After lawmakers narrowly avoided a government shutdown on September 30, a few renegade Republicans initiated a successful process to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, prompting a bitter three-week contest to determine McCarthy’s successor. That process effectively shut down the Capitol for most of October; even the Senate, which wasn’t directly impacted by the Speaker fight, struggled to accomplish much while the House sorted itself out.
New Jersey’s 12 House members were part of the Speaker drama from beginning to end, and in two cases they even played a starring role. Here’s a look at every vote they, and their two counterparts in the Senate, cast this month.
(Click here for a web version of the vote tracker, with links to the bills and votes in question, or scroll to the bottom of this article for a PDF version.)
Speaker now, or forever hold your peace
The initial vote to oust McCarthy came about due to a stopgap funding bill that McCarthy pushed through the House in late September to avert a government shutdown. The bill, which had gotten support from the entire Democratic caucus and around half of House Republicans, angered some conservative Republicans and prompted Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) to file a “motion to vacate” against McCarthy.
Gaetz ultimately recruited seven fellow Republicans to his anti-McCarthy cause, and every House Democrat (including all nine from New Jersey) joined them in supporting McCarthy’s ouster. That was enough to put McCarthy underwater: 216 House members voted in favor of the motion to vacate, while 210 voted against it.
None of New Jersey’s three Republicans were among Gaetz’s rebels, which wasn’t remotely surprising. Reps. Chris Smith (R-Manchester), Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) may differ politically from one another in many ways, but they have all been unwavering McCarthy backers since Republicans took control of the House in January.
There was a bit more intrigue among Democrats: they may not have especially liked McCarthy, but would they really all vote to oust him at the behest of a right-winger like Gaetz? The answer, it turns out, was yes.
“The vote for leader, as you know, is a family vote,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) told the New Jersey Globe a day after the vote. “It’s something they work out, the majority party works out in their caucus, just like we do in ours… What I believe is, that’s their family, and in Jersey we don’t mess with other people’s families. I leave that to their family.”
That vote kicked off a frenzied multi-week process within the Republican conference to choose a new Speaker, one that ended up completely derailing the House for several weeks.
Initially, Republicans nominated House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), but he flamed out within just a day; House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the runner-up behind Scalise in the initial contest, was chosen next. Van Drew supported Jordan in both secret-ballot votes, Smith supported Scalise in the first vote and Jordan in the second, and Kean didn’t reveal how he voted in either contest.
Scalise never took his nomination to the floor for a full House vote, but Jordan did – thrice. He failed all three times thanks to a cohort of two dozen or so Republicans, many of them from swing districts, who didn’t want the former House Freedom Caucus chair leading the House.
On the first two votes, all three New Jersey Republicans voted for Jordan. On the third ballot, however, Kean flipped, saying that he wanted the House to get back to work and that Jordan lacked the support to make that happen; he instead voted for McCarthy.
“For the past nearly three weeks, my number one priority has always been getting Congress moving again to do the work of the American people,” said Kean, who had come under fire from his prospective Democratic opponents over his two Jordan votes. “With great respect, it has become evident that Chairman Jordan does not and will not have the votes to become Speaker.”
New Jersey Democrats dutifully supported House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) on each vote, but behind the scenes, Gottheimer was working on an alternate solution: marshaling support for a resolution empowering Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina) on a temporary basis. For a brief moment in the middle of Jordan’s failed bid, Gottheimer’s push looked like it would succeed, but it unraveled after Republicans started coming out en masse against it.
After Jordan’s third failed floor attempt, Republicans voted to dump him as their Speaker nominee, and moved on to another internal nomination process.
Their third choice was House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota), but he ran into intransigent opposition from a group of right-wing House Republicans (and former President Donald Trump). A few hours after he was nominated, Emmer dropped out, and in a fourth internal vote the Republican conference instead chose Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who had lost to Emmer earlier that same day.
Van Drew and Smith supported Johnson in both contests, and Kean once again did not divulge his preferences.
Johnson, who is very conservative but not known as a bomb-thrower like Jordan, proved to be capable of doing what his three predecessors could not, uniting the entire Republican conference behind his Speaker bid. Johnson was elected Speaker by a vote of 220-209, with every present Republican supporting him and every present Democrat voting for Jeffries.
Van Drew summed up the general sense of relief among House Republicans when he cast his vote for Johnson on the House floor: “We are back, better than ever.”
Other House calls
Once Johnson was finally elected as Speaker, the House was in fact able to proceed onto some other business, including a resolution affirming support for Israel and condemning Hamas that was brought to the floor just hours after Johnson’s election.
The resolution passed overwhelmingly, 412-10, with all New Jersey House members of both parties supporting it; the lone dissenters were a small number of left-wing Democrats and one libertarian Republican.
“It’s clear where Congress stands,” Gottheimer said on Twitter after the resolution passed. “The United States will stand ready to provide Israel with the resources she needs to defend herself, and stand by her until every hostage, including American citizens, are returned home, and Hamas terrorists are brought to justice.”
The only other piece of substantive legislation the House got to is an appropriations bill for the Energy Department, one of the 12 appropriations bills Congress must pass to fund the government long-term.
Like previous appropriations bills the House has passed this year, the Energy Department bill was loaded with significant spending cuts and other conservative amendments, causing every House Democrat to oppose it. The bill passed on a 210-199 vote, with New Jersey representatives breaking down along party lines.
Lots of amendments were put to floor votes, most of them doomed right-wing amendments defunding various agencies and bureaucrats, but two stood out: two Democratic-authored amendments to limit plutonium pit production and nuclear warhead testing. The unsuccessful amendments divided New Jersey Democrats, with Reps. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) voting for both and Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) supporting the former but not the latter.
Semper Fi in the Senate
For New Jerseyans, the biggest news in the Senate this month didn’t happen on the floor, but rather in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Jamel Semper, an assistant U.S. Attorney nominated to be a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of New Jersey, came before the committee on October 4, and his nomination was favorably released last week. The committee vote was 13-8, with Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) joining Democrats in support.
“This guy is incredible,” Senator Cory Booker, who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, said at Semper’s initial hearing. “This man is incredibly Jersey. How Jersey is he, do you ask? He is a graduate of Rutgers Law School; he is a native son of Essex County; he is more Jersey than the Garden State Parkway, and he, like many people who have driven that notable road, has paid it forward. He’s paid his tolls.”
It’s not clear when exactly Semper will come before the full Senate for confirmation – it’s a process that can often take months – but when he does, he’ll likely be confirmed on a bipartisan vote.
The Senate also unanimously approved a pro-Israel resolution this month, and confirmed Jack Lew to be the United States Ambassador to Israel; Booker and Senator Bob Menendez voted in favor of both. And the upper chamber began work on a “minibus” deal, a spending package that encompasses three appropriations bills: Agriculture-FDA, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs and Military Construction.
The package itself hasn’t come up for a vote yet, but several amendments have, including one intriguing Republican-authored amendment to avert future government shutdowns. Had the amendment been enacted, it would automatically continue current funding levels if Congress reached a deadline without passing a full set of appropriations bills, but prevent Congress from working on any other matters until a long-term funding solution is approved.
The amendment got the support of a few Democrats, among them Menendez, but failed overall 56-42 (it needed a three-fifths majority to pass).