Kevin McCarthy Gets First GOP Challenger for House Speaker

The race for who will lead the incoming Republican majority in the next Congress is officially on.

On Tuesday, Arizona Representative Andy Biggs announced he would be mounting a challenge to current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to become speaker of the House, laying bare a rift in the Republican caucus that emerged after the party's underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

In a statement posted to his Twitter page, Biggs—a founding member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus—claimed the American people "want us to turn a page," adding they "do not want excuses or performance art, they want action and results." McCarthy, he suggested, has so far been unable to deliver on that promise.

"The promised red wave turned into a loss of the United States Senate, a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives, and upset losses of premiere political candidates," wrote Biggs. "My bid to run for Speaker is about changing the paradigm and the status quo. Minority Leader McCarthy does not have the votes needed to become the next Speaker of the House and his speakership should not be a foregone conclusion."

Biggs' announcement arrived prior to a closed-door vote of confidence for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's leadership in the next Congress, which is likely to maintain only a slim Republican majority in the House if Democrats, as expected, lose the remaining seats left on the map. McCarthy handily won his party's nomination to become speaker, 188-31, but he could need buy-in from party conservatives or from lawmakers across the aisle in order to achieve the 218 votes he would need to become speaker.

While talk of new leadership in the Senate has been relatively quiet in recent weeks, there have already been open discussions among more conservative Republicans like Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, expressing a desire for new, more hardline leadership. Some, like Florida Representative Byron Donalds, have already announced their own bids for lower-ranking positions in House leadership.

Others, like Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, have argued that a clear rift could lead to Democrats working with middle-of-the-road Republicans to advance more moderate leadership able to work on a bipartisan basis for the next two years.

Some, like Virginia Republican Representative Bob Good, have already publicly stated they would support Biggs for speaker. Others, like Greene, have told reporters that McCarthy has earned her trust and that no other candidates were acceptable to the entire GOP conference.

"If we don't unite behind Kevin McCarthy, we're opening up the door for the Democrats to be able to recruit some of our Republicans, and they may only need one or two since we don't know what we will have in the majority," Greene told reporters this week. "I can't support a challenge that will allow the Democrats to elect their own speaker by pulling some of ours."

Update 11/15/2022, 2:34 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.