Jim Jordan Couldn’t Win the Speaker’s Gavel Three Years Ago — Now a Blue Wave Has Handed Him the House Republicans

On Tuesday, Jim Jordan walked through the U.S. Capitol to a closed-door meeting of House Republicans and asked them for a job that has slipped through his fingers before. Nobody voted in public. The ballots were secret, the doors were shut, and the room was full of lawmakers still dazed by what had happened a week earlier.

When the count came out, it wasn’t close. Jordan 106, Steve Scalise 73.

One week after a blue wave swept Republicans from power — NBC News projects Democrats will hold about 259 seats, the largest House majority in 35 years — the party has chosen its fighter for the long winter ahead. It picked a man who lost a leadership race 159–43 in 2018, who could not win the speaker’s gavel in 2023, and who has spent eight years denying an accusation from his old wrestling room at Ohio State. Why him, and why now? His colleagues gave a blunt answer.

The Speaker Who Went Home to Shreveport

The vacancy opened fast. On the morning after Election Day, Speaker Mike Johnson told his staff on a call that he would not run for minority leader in the new Congress, according to CBS News.

A month earlier he had sounded almost relaxed about losing. “If God moves on our hearts and says we should go back to my hometown of Shreveport and start a lawn business, I’ll do that with equal fervor,” Johnson told Fox News on Oct. 8. On election night, speaking from Shreveport, he said: “It’s been the honor of my life to serve as the 56th speaker of the House — not a position we ever aspired to or expected to have.”

By that Wednesday, two men had already put their names forward in letters to colleagues. Both had been here before.

“I Know the Democrats’ Playbook”

Scalise, 61, made the case for experience. He has held GOP leadership posts since 2014, survived being shot at a congressional baseball practice in 2017 and was successfully treated for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, in 2023. “Overcoming adversity is nothing new to me,” he told colleagues, according to the Associated Press. He also pointed to the $67.9 million he raised for this year’s midterms.

Jordan, 62, made the case for a brawl. “This is a staggering day for our Conference,” he wrote in a two-page letter obtained by CBS News. “For too long, we have operated without a clear plan to survive the hour or the day in front of us. That will not cut it against an emboldened and energetic Democrat majority.”

Then he made the pitch that won the room. “I know the Democrats’ playbook,” Jordan wrote, calling himself “battle-tested on the oversight front.”

That was the point. Democrats have promised a wave of investigations into President Donald Trump’s administration, family and business ventures, NBC News reported, and House Republicans wanted the man who has spent years on the other side of those hearing-room tables. Jordan was the top Republican on the Oversight Committee before moving to lead Republicans on Judiciary, which he now chairs.

“The way that Jim fights says a lot about where this conference is,” said Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, who nominated him. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida put it even more plainly to the AP: “Instead of focusing on the people, it seems that the entire objective for Democrats is going to be targeted investigations. And Jim Jordan knows about weaponization.”

There was another reason, and it was arithmetic. The election wiped out a disproportionate share of moderates and swing-district Republicans, the AP reported. The members who are left are hungrier for a change. “We’re a significantly more conservative conference than we were,” Mast said.

The Man Who Kept Coming Up Short

For Jordan, the win closes a long loop. A two-time NCAA wrestling champion at Wisconsin, he came to Congress in 2007, helped found the hard-line House Freedom Caucus in 2015 and became its first chairman, tangling with Speaker John Boehner and causing headaches for Paul Ryan.

His climbs to the very top kept stalling. After the 2018 midterms, he challenged Kevin McCarthy for minority leader and was crushed, 159–43. When McCarthy was ousted in October 2023, Scalise beat Jordan for the nomination in a secret ballot. Neither man could get to 218 votes on the floor, and the job went to a little-known Louisiana congressman named Mike Johnson, the party’s fourth nominee.

Jordan is also one of Trump’s most loyal allies. He defended the president through the Russia investigations, voted against certifying Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s electoral votes after the 2020 election, USA Today notes, and was subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee, which called him a “significant player” in efforts to overturn the result, the Guardian reported.

The Question That Followed Him Into the Room

Within hours of Tuesday’s vote, an older story was back in the headlines.

From the late 1980s into the 1990s, Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State, where the team doctor was Richard Strauss. An independent investigation commissioned by the university found in 2019 that Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male students. Strauss died in 2005.

Since 2018, several former wrestlers have said it was impossible for Jordan not to know. Jordan has always denied it. A spokesman told ABC News that Jordan did not see or hear “of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it.”

When Jordan ran for speaker in 2023, four of those former wrestlers spoke out against him. “Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” Mike Schyck told NBC News at the time. Another, Dunyasha Yetts, said: “He still has to answer for what happened to us.” On Tuesday, as it reported his election, the Guardian put Schyck’s words back in front of readers.

Round One Starts in January

Jordan will lead a historically small conference when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3. Across the aisle, Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become the first Black speaker of the House, with Katherine Clark of Massachusetts set to become the first woman to serve as majority leader. Democrats hold their own leadership elections next week.

The fights have already started. On the same afternoon Jordan won, Republicans used what is left of their majority to block a vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, sending the articles to committee by 211–204. Starting in January, the votes will be counted by the other side.

Jordan kept his victory remarks short. “When Democrats offer more government, we’ll offer more freedom,” he told reporters. “We will bring that fight in committee, on the floor and on the stump every single day.”

Three years after the speaker’s gavel slipped away from him, Jim Jordan has finally won the top job in the House GOP. It just comes with something the speakership never did — a projected 259-seat Democratic majority sitting on the other side of the room.