By Michael Shepherd - Oct. 16, 2023
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Things have to get bad for Republicans for Maine's congressman to help pick the next speaker. Congress is effectively stalled right now because there has been no House speaker for almost two weeks. Now, a bipartisan desire for a new aid package for Israel in its war with Hamas is beginning to put more pressure on House Republicans to make a choice.

One potential candidate, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, dropped out last week. Now Jim Jordan of Ohio is the most likely candidate and is gunning for a vote on Tuesday, although CNN says he's facing an uphill battle to clinch the gavel because of lingering holdouts among Republicans' narrow 221-seat majority. If neither of those two can do it, it's unclear whether anybody can.

Enter Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine's 2nd District. In dribs and drabs, the centrist has been trying to exert leverage on Republicans after joining all other Democrats in ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California but also laying out how he might help the next speaker.

Golden and three other Democrats got a little bit more specific in a Friday letter to the acting speaker, Patrick McHenry of Virginia, who has been overseeing the chamber purely in a ministerial role. Read it.  They would be willing to grant McHenry more sweeping powers to operate in exchange for Democrats controlling half of the spots on a calendar reserved for noncontroversial bills.

Just like Golden's opposition to McCarthy was one of the big signals that he was going to lose his job, this is a sign that Republicans are going to have to give up something to Democrats if they cannot rally around Jordan or some candidate who emerges from their bench in the next week or so.

Notably, McCarthy refused to make a real attempt to win Democratic support while he was on the ropes. One reason is that many members of his conservative caucus would frown upon working with Democrats in any fashion. The stated reason that hardline Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida led the effort to oust McCarthy was the former speaker's deal to avert a shutdown, after all.

For the next speaker to make a deal with Golden and his allies, the pressure to open the chamber again must be greater than the pressure from the right. At this point, this is not the case. But the situation in Israel and the Gaza Strip has shown the danger of having a paralyzed branch of government, and things could get far worse on that front in the coming weeks.