On October 3, Kevin McCarthy was ousted as the Speaker of the House. This came after an effort headed by a small group of Republicans, which included Matt Gaetz. As of October 11th, the GOP nominated the representative from Louisiana’s first district, Steve Scalise, for Speaker of the House.

Steve Scalise’s political career stretches over 25 years. He was first a Louisiana state legislator from 1996-2008, the same year Scalise was elected to Congress. Up until 2023, he was a Minority and Majority Whip leader from 2014-2023. He has had a long political career, which makes him look qualified for the position based on experience.

Scalise narrowly won the nomination over Jim Jordan. The votes ended up being 113-99 in favor of Scalise. Steve Scalise has been dubbed “Mccarthys no.2” despite having a rivalry with Kevin Mccarthy. Jim Jordan is closer to McCarthy and received votes from some top conservatives within the House.

Steve Scalise does face a few hurdles. He was recently diagnosed with a rare blood cancer called Multiple Myeloma. He said that it was very treatable because it was caught early. The next hurdle is getting a majority of the votes to win the speaker of the House. He won 51% of the votes for the nomination, which is a slim margin; now, he needs to get 217 votes to win the nomination. We have seen how tedious the voting process can be due to what we saw last January with McCarthy. These are just some challenges that Scalise faces to win the gavel.

The vote has not been given a date.