Ex-Michigan lawmaker Amash isn’t in Congress, but still wants to be speaker of the House

Former west Michigan U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, a Libertarian who maligned the state of national politics before retiring from his House seat in 2020, is launching an improbable bid to become speaker of the House despite not being an elected member, something that has never happened before.

There's no explicit rule mandating the speaker has to be a current member. In 2021, a Democratic lawmaker introduced a bill to create such a requirement, but that legislation never became law.

"I’m not a current member of Congress, but I do know what’s at stake. I’d gladly serve as speaker of the House for one term to show people the kind of legislative body we can have if someone at the top actually cares about involving every representative in the work of legislating," Amash, of Cascade Township, said in a long Twitter thread. He also touched on the need for legislative reforms and criticized U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the expected Republican front-runner for Speaker of the house.

Amash was first elected to Congress in 2010, winning an open seat by 21 points to replace the late Rep. Vern Ehlers, who retired after representing the area since 1993.

Amash, like many other Republicans elected that year, was a Tea Party candidate. The Tea Party movement saw many fiscally conservative candidates elected to office after then-President Barack Obama was elected to the White House in 2008.

Amash comfortably won reelection to his seat before he decided not to seek another term in 2020. He left the Republican Party in 2019, citing a lack of an open legislative process in Congress and politics entering a "partisan death spiral."

It's a long-shot bid that's unlikely to come to fruition and is a further illustration of the frustrations Amash had with the Republican Party in 2020, along with his disagreements with former President Donald Trump. But with McCarthy facing at least one internal challenge, Amash's salvo could signal a narrow path for the California Republican in his pursuit to be speaker.

McCarthy, who was GOP minority leader while Democrats controlled the House in the previous session, is expected to have the bulk of his party's support in the vote for speaker Tuesday. But since Republicans don't have an overwhelming majority in the House, any internal challenges to McCarthy's leadership could see him fall short of the required majority of votes to become speaker. And Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs tweeted last month he would challenge McCarthy for the speakership.

If all 434 members of Congress (normally 435, but a replacement for the late Rep. Donald McEachin, of Virginia, has not yet been named) vote for a speaker, McCarthy would need a majority of that number — at least 218 votes — to become speaker. Republicans currently hold 222 seats to Democrats' 212.

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However, some members may vote "present" rather than for a specific speaker candidate. "Present" votes would lower the threshold needed for a majority.

While there's no precedent for the speaker not being a sitting member, previous leadership votes have seen non-members receive votes. Per the Congressional Research Service, in six leadership elections since 1997, non-members received speaker votes.

Amash's bid remains unlikely to be successful. Despite his somewhat-rocky departure from the Republican Party (he was the first GOP member at the time to call for Trump's first impeachment), Amash isn't likely to garner much, if any support from Democrats for his speaker bid. Even after leaving the GOP, Amash remains considerably conservative — he has argued against stricter gun laws, climate change regulations and abortion access.

The vote for a new speaker began on Tuesday. Because McCarthy, and other candidates, failed to capture the required majority to become speaker, additional rounds of voting took place with no one winning a majority before the House adjourned for the day. The last time it took multiple ballots to elect a House Speaker was a century ago in 1923, when it took nine rounds to elect Massachusetts Republican Frederik Huntington Gillett, per the U.S. House website.

Contact Arpan Lobo: alobo@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @arpanlobo.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash tweets outside bid for House speaker