Still no House Speaker: Mary Miller, from downstate Illinois, emerges as hard-line McCarthy opponent

WASHINGTON — California Republican Kevin McCarthy failed to win enough votes to become speaker of the House of Representatives after six rounds of voting on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Mary Miller from Illinois emerging as one of the solid bloc of 20 GOP holdouts.

The House adjourned Wednesday night rather than holding a seventh vote McCarthy that would lose and will meet again at noon Thursday.

Still, negotiations behind the scenes may eventually yield the 218 votes McCarthy needs, according to Illinois Republican Darin LaHood, a McCarthy backer on the inside in trying to broker an agreement.

“I believe we are making progress. The two sides are working diligently together,” LaHood told the Sun-Times on Wednesday night, after the vote to adjourn.

McCarthy has few members to spare — he needs to find 218 votes from 222 House Republicans. McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol on Wednesday night that there “has been a lot of progress.” Still, his vote counts ranged from 201 to 203, showing the uphill battle he faces with the hard-liners, whose ranks include Miller.

LaHood, from Peoria, said the timing of a deal is not clear. “It’s a very tortured process,” he said. “I’m cautiously optimistic,” with talks ongoing, he said.

Many of the unresolved issues have to do with the rules detailing how the House is run — and, on the political side, whether or not there is a deal on GOP leadership and allied political groups staying out of Republican House primaries.

Miller is from the 15th Congressional District, safe, heavily Republican turf anchored in southern Illinois. Miller is a farmer from Oakland, raised in suburban Naperville and married to her like-minded spouse, GOP state Rep. Chris Miller.

Miller won a second term in November after defeating former Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., in the June 28 Illinois primary, with Miller heavily leveraging the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump that she got near the beginning of her campaign.

Though Trump urged House Republicans to back McCarthy, the 20 against McCarthy stood firm against him, showing Trump’s lack of influence in this fight.

Miller is one of the members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden as president on Jan. 6, 2021. She is a member of the very conservative Freedom Caucus. She is also an election denier. Her reputation is that of one more engaged in ideological issues than in district-specific legislation.

In October, a New York Times study found, based on her tweets, that Miller is one of the most polarizing figures in Congress. Miller’s rhetoric was featured in the lead of the analysis about how “incendiary rhetoric fuels polarization.”

Davis, on CNN said on Tuesday, “I don’t think anybody from Illinois would be surprised by that vote,” about Miller’s not backing McCarthy.

The Illinois delegation sends three Republicans and 14 Democrats to the House, which right now is at a standstill as none of the members can be sworn in until a speaker is elected.

Illinois Republican Mike Bost, who is in line to chair the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, was part of a group of GOP members who urged support for McCarthy at a press conference Wednesday.

Bost, from Murphysboro, noted that the House has stopped functioning. “We can’t stop this [Biden] administration and do our job of oversight which is given to us in the Constitution until we have a Speaker.”

Working in McCarthy’s favor on Wednesday night — and designed to appeal to the 20 — were announcements from the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Club for Growth. The Congressional Leadership Fund pledged to not spend money in open-seat primaries in safe Republican districts.

The Club for Growth — heavily bankrolled by Lake Forest Republican mega-donor Richard Uihlein — said that if a pending deal regarding its concerns about rules gets done, the group will support McCarthy. The Club for Growth’s political arm spent over $2.5 million on Miller’s behalf in her primary against Davis. While Trump’s urging members to vote for McCarthy did not move Miller — one of Trump’s most ardent supporters among Illinois elected officials — maybe an endorsement of McCarthy by the Club for Growth will.

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