Chip Roy and other Texas holdouts flip votes and now support Kevin McCarthy, who remains short in speaker bid

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — This article was originally published in the Texas Tribune.

The three Texas Republican holdouts who have helped block Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid for House Speaker over the course of 11 historic votes and four days voted for the California Republican on Friday.

However, McCarthy still appeared as though he would come up short of the votes to win the gavel on Friday during the first vote of the day. Enough GOP members voted against McCarthy, denying him a majority — however the vote represented the most movement from his opponents since voting started Tuesday. It was the first vote where he won a plurality of votes, besting the Democrat’s choice Hakeem Jeffries.

Reps. Chip Roy, R-Austin, and Michael Cloud, R-Victoria, and Rep.-elect Keith Self, R-McKinney, switched their votes for McCarthy who is favored by the overwhelming majority of their party after a marathon of negotiations over how he would lead the House. Roy was one of the most vocal opponents to McCarthy’s speakership, demanding more changes to House rules to give more power to rank-and-file members and more mechanisms to keep leadership accountable.

Roy, Cloud and Self’s vote change signaled an immanent deal on their numerous demands on how the House should operate. Roy was one of the top negotiators for the camp opposing McCarthy’s bid, shuttling between the House floor and Republican Whip Tom Emmer’s office for hours on Thursday.

He, McCarthy and their allies presented an optimistic attitude through Thursday afternoon into Friday morning that an agreement was nigh. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-South Carolina, told reporters Thursday evening that a first-round agreement had been presented to dissenting members, and Roy signaled a chipper tune when asked about it.

“We’re working hard,” Roy said, though he refused to disclose the contours of the negotiations with reporters.

The dissenting members hoped to reinstate a rule allowing any one member to force a vote that could remove the speaker from his post — a rule that McCarthy long resisted. They also demanded greater assurances that members would have more time to review and debate legislation and a more central role for the deeply conservative House Freedom Caucus in the Republican conference.

Roy, Cloud and Self presented themselves as good-faith negotiators who had no personal beef with McCarthy and appeared open to figuring out a leadership deal from the get go. When Self cast his vote, he declared to the packed chamber: “We are making progress.” The three members each received thunderous applause and standing ovations from their Republican peers as they cast their votes. In the end, 14 of the 20 dissenting Republicans switched to vote for McCarthy.

The Texans were eager to differentiated themselves from other more bombastic dissenters such as Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, and Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, who derided McCarthy from the House floor Friday as having lost the confidence of the party. The fissure within the dissenting camp became increasingly apparent as negotiations went on, with some members saying the remaining hold outs were just doing it for attention.

“It has become clear to me that a couple of individuals are simply obstructionists, more interested in self-promotion than restoring the Republic,” Self said in a statement following his vote.

Roy and Self noted that they aren’t done negotiating, but their votes were a sign of McCarthy’s honest efforts. Republican members had a conference call on Friday morning to flesh out where they all stood. While McCarthy indicated he had a path forward with Roy, the Austin Republican tweeted “any agreement will take us ALL. We are making progress… but don’t let the sharks confuse the ongoing engagement.”