Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson presided over the fifth most balloted Speaker election in US history, all other House business at a standstill. (They didn’t even know if they had healthcare, or would their staff be paid at midmonth as usual.) Voting started with 212 for House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York (and stayed there virtually throughout) vs 203 for Kevin McCarthy, with radical Republicans voting for neither or for Andy Biggs, R-Ariz, as a demand for key commitments that McCarthy make easier to depose a speaker, weaken the powers of the speaker's office to drive the legislative agenda and assign committee posts, and drive legislation for term limits on members of Congress. Republicans hold a narrow 222-212 majority at the moment, with one vacancy, totalling 234 members rather than 235…
Finally, at about 1:00 this morning, after a motion to adjourn was quashed, came the 15th ballot —a number exceeded only in 1820, 1849, 1855 (a record 133 ballots) and 1859—electing McCarthy on 216 votes —possible because six radical Republicans voted “present,” reducing the total he needed for a majority.
The stand-off resembled a kind of 2nd anniversary re-enactment of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, the House committee on that only weeks ago concluding its work, its full report including recommending the Ethics Committee investigate McCarthy for his refusal to comply with that investigation.
There appears to be no news yet on <big>who will be the next Clerk of the House</big> but clearly s/x/he will need the savvy and stamina displayed this past week by “Madam Clerk”Cheryl Johnson,
born [1960] in New Orleans [to] Rev. Charlie and Cynthia Davis Johnson … graduated from the Univ. of Iowa with a bachelor’s in journalism and mass communications in 1980 … earned her <big>J.D.</big> degree from Howard Univ School of Law in 1984 … attended Harvard’s Kennedy School's senior management program in 1988…. served as director and counsel for the Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Libraries and Memorials, House Committee on Post Office, and Civil Service Subcommittee on Investigations, [working] with the Subcommittee chair ... to exercise oversight and legislative responsibility over the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution ... served as the chief education and investigative counsel [and principal policy advisor and spokesperson] for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce ... primarily focused on elementary and secondary education issues, juvenile justice, child nutrition, labor issues, and older Americans' employment and nutrition programs .. After nearly twenty years in the House … [she moved to] the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Government Relations for ten years, serving one of those years as director.
In late December 2018, Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi [nominated Johnson as the next] Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives… the second African American [to hold that post, after Lorraine C. Miller].On February 25, 2019 Johnson was sworn in as the 36th Clerk and assumed the role [the next day].
Johnson lives in Chevy Chase, MD [with her husband and their son]. She is a member of the [D.C.] and Louisiana Bars … serves on the board of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church and the Faith and Politics Institute
[From] January 3, 2023 [through approx 1:00a.m. January 7, 2023], Johnson [presided] over the first session of the118th United States Congress [through 15 attempts by the new Republican majority] to elect a Speaker of the House ...
Along with other House officers, the Clerk is elected every two years after election of the Speaker, “The full House adopts a resolution to elect the [remaining] officers, who ... begin serving ... after they [take] the oath of office.” Thus, it is the previously electedclerk of the House who summons Representatives and convenes each new Congress for the first time, calling the House to order
by gaveling it into session. After a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, the clerk then calls the roll of representatives-elect, which is done as an electronic quorum call in the modern era, and then oversees the election of a Speaker. During these processes, the Clerk must "preserve order and decorum and decide all questions of order" [which is subject to appeal].The Speaker is then sworn in, takes the chair, administers oaths to the rest of the of members-elect, and the House then proceeds with [the next order of business: nominating and electing the remaining officers, including Clerk...]
BTW, TheConversation provides information on the job of a Speaker of the House for any govt&politics junkies lacking enuf for the week!
AndHERE ISRachel Paine Caufield,an expert on all thing Congress at Drake University, to clarify the details of a situation that for those 4 days we kind of had no one in the House doing the work of government (except possible Madam Speaker), because until the members are sworn in, they can’t, and until there’s a Speaker, there’s no one who can do the swearing in. And other fascinating details that strongly remind me of the popular question ‘who’s in charge of the country if the president is incapacitated”— for four days, the House was incapacitated even though their first ballot the first day came out 212 for a Democrat and only 203 for a Republican….