Washington, Oct 18 (IANS) House Democrats were “knives out” on Tuesday to run down Ohio Republican Jim Jordan’s speakership bid in the House as they want to turn it into a political campaign issue ahead of the 2024 presidential election. They will vote for Hakeem Jefferies for Speaker, who is the House minority leader of the Democrats.
Democrats, who accuse Jim Jordan of political extremism and his involvement in the January 6 political insurrection, will campaign to retake the House majority next year, says the UK’s Guardian per a memo it has claimed to have obtained in its “US Politics Live” blog.
“It is imperative that our caucus makes clear to voters just how extreme Congressman Jordan is and how his Speakership would negatively impact working families across the country, threaten democratic norms, and weaken relationships with our allies,” according to the document from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which is tasked with winning the party seats in the House.
The memo, October 17, 2023, addressed to House Democrats, suggests supporters of Jordan are doing the bidding of former US President Donald Trump, and that the potential speaker “has shown voters just how extreme he is and there is no indication that he’ll moderate himself in any way if he becomes speaker”.
In fact, he’ll pull the entire Republican caucus even further to the right, media reports said.
“It appears there are no more moderates left in the Republican conference capable of standing up to the far right,” the document says.
Democrats are just four seats away from taking the majority from the Republicans in next year’s elections.
The DCCC is thus focused on ousting 18 Republican legislators representingdistricts where voters supported Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
“The DCCC is committed to ensuring that every battleground Member of the Republican conference who stands and votes for a Speaker Jordan will be making a career ending move,” the memo concluded.
Meanwhile other US media outlets claimed that if Jim Jordan is not elected House speaker on the first round of voting, he will go to a second round, though it’s unclear if he will try to negotiate with Republican holdouts in between ballots.
It took Kevin McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to win election as speaker in January.
Donald Trump first endorsed Jordan’s name for speakership, influencing his flock in the GOP to follow him in the support. Jordan boosted his national profile as a Trump loyalist during his presidency, and continued doing so after his violent departure from office.
Jordan is a prominent celebrity on the far right of US politics — and a magnet for controversy who was called a “political terrorist” by a prominent GOP member from his own party.
Jordan, 59, was elected to Congress in 2006 from a conservative, rural district of Ohio.
Jordan is not free of controversy. He was hounded in the media about a sexual abuse scandal at Ohio State University, where he was a wrestling coach before he entered politics.
In the last Congress, when Democrats held the gavel, Jordan refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee, despite being served with a subpoena.
But his involvement in Trump’s machinations has been widely reported. He is known, for instance, to have spoken with the then president on the morning of the riot.
–IANS
ash/pgh
