The House finally elected a speaker. Here’s how lawmakers from Kansas and Missouri voted

Rep. Jake LaTurner, a Kansas Republican, emerged frustrated from a House Republican Conference meeting Tuesday evening that had once again gone sideways.

A small group of Republicans had just rejected a third candidate elected by the majority of the conference. After 21 days without a speaker, it was uncertain whether all of the factions of the party could agree on a fourth.

“I thought we had reached rock bottom, but we hadn’t,” LaTurner said. “So we’re gonna get there. We have to, we have no choice.”

Republicans finally got there on Wednesday, as the conference stuck together to elect Rep. Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, as speaker of the House. He won the vote 220-209.

The Republican members from Kansas and Missouri — like they had throughout the process — supported Johnson, who was the consensus choice of the conference. His record appeased hard-liners and his low profile status helped get him support from an institutionalist faction eager to move on from the tumult.

“I think a lot of folks don’t really understand what a speaker is all about,” said Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican. “Your speaker is not somebody that has to be ideologically pure because the speaker technically checks his ideology at the door. He represents all of us, not just his own personal ideology, his own personal views.”

But Democrats on Wednesday were quick to highlight Johnson’s policy views.

Johnson is a constitutional lawyer and served as the senior spokesman for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a prominent conservative legal group that pushes back against LGBTQ and abortion rights. His legislative record has an A+ rating with Susan B. Anthony List, a prominent anti-abortion group. He organized a friend of the court brief supporting a lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to block the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Johnson — who was first elected to Congress in 2016 and was not a member of the previous House leadership team — will now be forced to negotiate with the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House as President Joe Biden is pushing for a $105 billion military aid bill, which includes funding for Ukraine, Israel and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. He’ll also have to agree on a path to keep the government open after funding is set to expire on November 17.

“This needs to get done,” said Rep. Ann Wagner, a Missouri Republican, on Tuesday. “Because we need to have a strong showing for Israel on the floor. We need to finish our appropriations process. We need to also be talking about our border, and we’re talking about some of the other supplemental fundings that are coming. So there’s a lot of really tough issues out there.”

The vote capped an extraordinary period of chaos in the House after an early October vote that toppled former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, after he worked with Democrats to temporarily keep the government open.

Republicans, riven by disunity, had appeared unable to unify around a single candidate for speaker as hard-line members rejected more establishment candidates and more institutionalist members were unwilling to support hard-liners.

Republicans from Missouri and Kansas did little to disrupt the status quo throughout the process, dutifully supporting the candidate who had the backing of the majority of the caucus.

How they voted

The members either voted for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House Leader, or Rep. Mike Johnson, who Republicans selected as their speaker-designate.

Kansas

Rep. Sharice Davids (D) — Jeffries

Rep. Ron Estes (R) — Johnson

Rep. Jake LaTurner (R) — Johnson

Rep. Tracey Mann (R) — Johnson

Missouri

Rep. Mark Alford (R) — Johnson

Rep. Eric Burlison (R) — Johnson

Rep. Cori Bush (D) — Jeffries

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D) — Jeffries

Rep. Sam Graves (R) — Johnson

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R) — Johnson

Rep. Jason Smith (R) — Johnson

Rep. Ann Wagner (R) — Johnson