Since the beginning of the 118th United States Congress, who is to be Speaker of the House has been a question surrounded by buzz and controversy. The previous speaker Nancy Pelosi served in the position for eight years and was influential during her tenure. The loss of Democratic majority compounded with the controversy of certain political figures within the Republican party, like Donald Trump, gave birth to a messy race for the position of speaker. It took fifteen rounds of voting for former republican house minority leader, representative Kevin McCarthy, to win the position. Needing 215 to win McCarthy won 216 votes, making it a close and controversial race. Even among his party members he was not popular, inciting popular Republican governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis to say he “opposed McCarthy when it wasn’t cool.”
McCarthy, due to his lack of popularity, was ousted as speaker by a group of 216 House Democrats and Republicans leading to the first successful vote to remove a speaker in American history. On Oct. 25, the House elected Representative Mike Johnson.
Johnson, 51, has served as a representative of Louisiana since 2017, after working as a private attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
He supports the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, voting against an investigation into the capital storming of January 6th, 2021.
Johnson is staunchly anti-abortion saying, “when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters,” in 2015 to writer Irin Cameron.
In an infamous move, Johnson wrote an amicus brief, an opinion of an uninvolved party or organization used to assist in the court’s decision, on behalf of the ADF for the 2003 landmark case Lawrence V. Texas, where he opposed the eventual decision which made it unconstitutional to criminalize homosexuality.
Despite his strong opinions on such controversial issues, 39 % of American adults haven’t formed an opinion on Johnson according to an Oct. 28 poll by The Economist and YouGov. This is largely attributed by experts to his lack of a large public presence before his bid for the speaker position.
Bar some unforeseen controversy like McCarthy’s government shutdown blunder, another historic vote for removal is highly unlikely and we will likely have Johnson as speaker for the remainder of the current congress’s term. Here’s to a wise and fruitful term as speaker of the house.
