It took 15 votes beginning Jan. 3, but Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) finally gained enough votes to be elected speaker of the House of Representatives in a nail-bitingly close election that ran past midnight in the lower chamber of the U.S. Capitol.
McCarthy’s 216 votes total bested Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York who received the votes of every Democrat present in the chamber on every one of the 15 votes that began a little after noon Jan. 3 when the 118th Congress convened for the day.
During a 14th vote about an hour and a half earlier, when everybody in the chamber realized at the end of the roll call that only one more vote was needed to put McCarthy into the Speaker’s seat, highly animated conversations took place as members tried to persuade Gaetz or Boebert to switch their vote….