Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio will become the next House Minority Leader after beating out the party’s current Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana for the position.
Jordan, a hard-line conservative and Trump ally who’s served in Congress for nearly two decades and currently chairs the House Judiciary Committee, secured the role in a secret ballot vote of 106-73.
The Ohio lawmaker announced his bid for the top Republican position in the lower chamber in the next Congress after Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that he would not run for the role in the aftermath of a blue wave that shifted control of both chambers to Democrats.
“In these next two years, our job cannot be merely to spotlight how radical this new Democrat party is—offense, not defense, wins elections,” Jordan said in a letter to colleagues a day after Democrats scored a series of sweeping victories in the midterms. “Republican policies prioritize making Americans’ neighborhoods safer, keeping more money in their pockets, and protecting enduring American values and freedoms. To restore our majority, we must restore voters’ faith in our ability to deliver on these principles.”
He warned that Democrats would “wreak havoc on every sector of our economy” and “turn their full attention to investigating every facet of the Administration and private entities across the country.”
Jordan called himself “battle-tested on the oversight front,” adding, “I know the Democrats’ playbook.”
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Scalise announced that he would run for House Minority Leader on the same day as Jordan.
“It is more important now than ever for us to emerge from this stronger and united because the stakes couldn’t be higher,” Scalise wrote in a letter to colleagues. “The socialists are coming to Washington with a radical agenda that threatens the America we hold dear … The House Republican Conference must be the first line of defense in this crucial battle, and we must fight like our way of life depends on it—because it does.”
Scalise, who has has served in Congress for nearly 20 years and held positions as the No. 2 or No. 3 Republican in the House for over a decade, similarly warned his party of what he called Democrats “radical ‘oversight’ agenda,” which he said will target key White House officials, President Donald Trump, and “extend far beyond the Oval Office. He vowed to in turn “discredit their ‘investigations’ and put them on defense.”
To pick the House leaders for each party, returning and newly elected members of the Democratic and Republican conferences in the lower chamber gather privately and vote via secret ballot for their preferred candidate.
Minority leaders must only secure a simple majority within their own party’s House membership. To become Speaker of the House, meanwhile, a candidate must secure the backing of a majority of all those voting in the full lower chamber.
Both Scalise and Jordan previously ran for Speaker in 2023 after Kevin McCarthy became the first person holding the position to be ousted by a House vote.
Scalise originally secured the House Republican conference’s nomination for the role at the time, beating Jordan, but later withdrew after failing to get enough support for a successful full House vote. Jordan, whose bid had been endorsed by Trump, then became the conference’s nominee, but he also failed to garner the needed backing on the House floor after three votes. Republicans ultimately rallied around Johnson, who gained both Scalise and Johnson’s votes en route to securing the position.
Johnson, who won reelection in Louisiana’s Fourth District last week, said a day after Election Day that “while the outcome of this midterm is not what we’d hoped and fought for, a new battle is just beginning,” in a post on X.
“This Democrat House majority will be led by the most radical and extreme leftists in American history,” he continued, adding, “We will continue pressing forward with our agenda of common sense, and our vision to make America great again—and come 2028, we WILL take back the House and we will finish the job.”
The same day, however, Johnson informed his staff that he would not seek a leadership position in the next Congress.
In the wake of the midterm elections, Trump, who said he had not asked Johnson to step down, lauded the Speaker’s leadership, calling him “fantastic.” The President also said that “we’ll stay out of it” when asked about the race for Congress’ next Minority Leader.
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