With the Republican Party deadlocked over choosing a House leader, the name of Florida congressman Byron Donalds looms as a possible option among conservatives who refuse to support Kevin McCarthy.
The leader of the previous legislature again fell short of the 218 votes needed to become Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, after the far-right continued to block his nomination, supporting alternative candidates within the party.
In three ballots on Tuesday and three more on Wednesday, the results have been largely the same, with 20 more conservative Republicans refusing to support McCarthy.
McCarthy’s opponents nominated several other candidates, such as Andy Biggs of Arizona or Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Byron Donalds joined the list of opponents on Tuesday, changing his vote from McCarthy to Jordan and also appears as an alternative to head the lower house of the US Congress, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Donalds, 44, was elected in November to his second term representing Florida’s 19th district, in the southwestern part of the state.
A native of Brooklyn, Donalds was raised by a single mother and graduated from Florida State University in 2002. His wife, Erika Donalds, is an advocate for the school choice movement in the state.
Last year, Donalds told CBS that McCarthy had “done tremendous things” for Republicans in the House of Representatives.
And in the first two rounds of voting on Tuesday, Donalds voted for McCarthy before opting for Jordan in the third round, noting, via Twitter, “the reality is… McCarthy has no votes.”
Already this Wednesday, when his own name was indicated, Donalds voted in his favor.
The Republicans postponed the vote in the lower house of Congress at 8:00 p.m. (01:00 a.m. on Thursday in Lisbon), while the impasse over the election of Kevin McCarthy continues and an attempt is made to find a solution.
Despite having 222 seats in the Lower House of Congress, obtained in the midterm elections last November, the Republican Party cannot agree on the choice of leadership and remains divided.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has already described the blockade of the election of the new leader of the House of Representatives as “shameful”, due to the internal divisions of the Republicans.
In an unprecedented situation in the last 100 years of American democracy, Kevin McCarthy’s candidacy for the leadership of the Republican caucus in the lower house of Congress does not appear to be successful.
A sector of ultra-conservative Republicans, close to former President Donald Trump, refuses to support McCarthy’s candidacy for the leadership of the House of Representatives, alleging that this congressman does not represent the genuine values of the party.
This wing also criticized McCarthy for not having negotiated with them a reform of the rules of debate or the names to lead the parliamentary committees in the new legislature.
McCarthy, a California legislator and leader of the Republican ranks since 2014, had already announced that he did not have the necessary 218 votes and that there would be “a battle in the chamber.”
Source: TSF
