Rival Republicans wrangle House votes in contest to fill leadership vacuum

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/18/rival-republicans-house-leadership-eric-cantor-vacuum

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The race for the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives entered its final stretch on Wednesday with the party, still reeling from last week's shock defeat of majority leader Eric Cantor, gripped in a debate over its future.

Republican members of Congress crowded into a windowless vault in the basement of the Capitol building to hear speeches from the two candidates vying to replace Cantor – Kevin McCarthy and Raul Labrador – and a trio of representatives locked into a tight contest for the role of chief whip.

The election of chief whip – the third-ranking position in the House GOP, and the role being vacated by McCarthy, who will almost certainly win majority leader – could be the most consequential outcome of Cantor's primary defeat in Virginia to a virtually unknown Tea Party candidate.

With the secret ballot due to take place on Thursday, Steve Scalise, a staunch conservative, is believed to have a slight edge in the race over his main opponent, Peter Roskam, from Illinois, the chief deputy whip preferred by the upper ranks.

"Conservatives have been very concerned that we haven't had a voice at the leadership table," said John Fleming, a member of the Tea Party caucus who is backing Scalise, a fellow Louisianan. "This may be a good opportunity to have that voice."

The contest for chief whip is complicated by the entry of a third candidate, Marlin Stutzman, a representative from Indiana who also aligns with rightwingers in the party.

Under the GOP's election rules, the winning candidate will need a clear majority on the first vote from the 233 Republican members of Congress, or the the third place challenger – probably Stutzman – is knocked out of the race and a second ballot is held.

It appears that Scalise and Roskam are short of the 117 votes required to win the contest outright, plunging both into a frenzied campaign for Stutzman's voters. Scalise believes he has around 100 votes, while Roskam thinks he can count on around 90, according to both the Washington Post andPolitico, making a second ballot likely.

In that scenario, Stutzman's votes could end up deciding the race.

"We've got a plan for each contingency," Scalise told the Guardian. "When you've got multiple people in the race, you've got the possibility of multiple ballots. We've always planned for that and we've been talking to people in camps from both opponents."

He declined to say whether he had sufficient votes to win in the first round.

"Both candidates [Scalise and Roskam] have second ballot strategies," said Tom Cole, a senior party figure from Oklahoma. "Both candidates are working really hard."

Tellingly, Cole, a close ally of the House speaker, John Boehner, said he was backing Scalise because he could "reach into a part of the conference that is sometimes the most restive".

That was code for the staunch conservative wing of the party that pushed for last October's government shutdown and is refusing to countenance the immigration reform GOP bosses believe is critical to broadening its support among Latino voters.

Although Scalise does not enjoy universal support from the right of his party, some establishment figures believe he has sufficient leverage to mollify the obstructionist Tea Party elements who are seeking to convert Cantor's staggering defeat into grips on the levers of power within the party.

Scalise would not be the first choice of the most rightwing elements in the party, some of whom are leaning toward Stutzman, who used his speech to colleagues to lay out his stall as a fierce conservative.

But in a second ballot, Scalise may benefit from Stutzman's transferred votes. "If we go to a second ballot, the really question is where do those individuals in the Stutzman camp go," said Cole. "You would think that ideologically those people probably lean toward Scalise, but you don't know that."

The power jockeying triggered by Cantor's departure is revealing fissures in the Republican party more numerous and complex than the simple dichotomy between the establishment and Tea Party factions of the party.

The freshman class of 2010 – Republicans who elected during the surge the party received during the midterm elections four years ago – have been rallying together.

Geography, too, is playing a major role, with concern among many southern, red-state Republicans that they are not fairly represented at the top of the party.

Delegations from Texas and Pennsylvania are also bandying together to make joint demands of the candidates in return for their vote.

Aside from the various blocs of votes, GOP members have spent days scheming in corridors and offices on Capitol Hill, with rumours that competing candidates had made promises of committee chairmanships and favourable treatment.

McCarthy, from California, is widely expected to defeat Idaho's Raul Labrador, who has mustered some of the conservative vote on the fringe of the party, but is way short of the numbers needed to mount a serious challenge.

Fleming, for example, said he was backing McCarthy because Labrador told him he would contemplate some kind of immigration reform prior to 2017 – a red line for many House conservatives.

The inability of the rightwingers to translate Cantor's defeat into a significant power grab was mocked by Devin Nunes, a moderate Republican from California close to McCarthy.

He called the rightwing element of his party "the exotic club" and pointed out that for days, prior to Labrador stepping into the race, they were unable to put forward a candidate.

"When we implemented their strategy of shutting down the government it was a miserable failure. Now you have the same people who led us in that direction wanting to lead us again, but they didn't even have a candidate," he said.

"You would think that people who have been plotting this big takeover of leadership for months and months, or even years, would at least have a plan to move forward."