House Republicans Elect Jim Jordan as Minority Leader in 106–73 Vote Over Steve Scalise

House Republicans have chosen Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio as their next leader, elevating one of President Donald Trump’s fiercest allies in Congress to the top of a party that is still absorbing a sweeping defeat in last week’s midterm elections. Jordan defeated House Majority Leader Steve Scalise by 106 votes to 73 in a closed-door secret ballot on Tuesday, 10 November, according to the Associated Press, and will serve as minority leader when Democrats take control of the chamber in January.

The vote was a clear statement of intent from a conference that is smaller, more conservative and, in the words of its own members, in no mood to retreat. Jordan, 62, is a co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and its first chairman, and he has spent nearly two decades in Congress building a reputation as a combative interrogator in committee rooms and a loyal defender of Trump. His victory came after House Speaker Mike Johnson declined to seek the minority leader’s job, leaving Scalise, the party’s long-serving number two, as the establishment candidate — and the loser.

“Over the next two years House Republicans will fight for American families,” Jordan told reporters after the vote, without taking questions, according to USA Today. “When Democrats offer more government, we’ll offer more freedom. We will bring that fight in committee, on the floor and on the stump every single day.”

Cheers rang out from the closed-door meeting where Republicans cast their secret ballots, USA Today reported, as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee was elevated to the party’s top post in the chamber. Jordan will succeed Johnson as the leading House Republican when the 120th Congress convenes in January 2027, inheriting what the Associated Press described as a historically small conference that is only beginning to grapple with its loss of power while Trump serves out his final two years in office.

A familiar match-up, a different result

Jordan and Scalise came to Congress together two decades ago, and Tuesday’s contest was not their first. Both men ran to serve as House speaker after Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the job in 2023, and neither was able to rally the support needed to secure the position, which eventually went to Johnson, who is now stepping aside from leadership in the new Congress. Scalise had edged Jordan in a similar secret-ballot vote three years ago in the race to succeed McCarthy, according to the Associated Press, though neither man ended up getting the job.

This time the outcome was reversed, and by a comfortable margin. Scalise, 61, has held key Republican leadership positions going back to 2014, serving as party whip and then as majority leader. In 2017 he was critically wounded when a gunman opened fire at a baseball practice where several Republican lawmakers and staffers were preparing for an annual charity baseball game against Democrats. In 2023 he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that was successfully treated. In his pitch to colleagues, he emphasised his fundraising strength, noting that he raised 67.9 million dollars for this year’s midterms, with about a third of that going directly to individual House campaigns and the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to the Associated Press.

“Overcoming adversity is nothing new to me,” Scalise said in his pitch to colleagues, according to the Associated Press.

But the majority of Republicans opted for Jordan, who emphasised his experience battling Democrats in committee rooms. Jordan served as the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee before becoming the lead Republican on the Judiciary Committee six years ago, and he has chaired that committee since 2023. That record proved popular with his colleagues.

“The way that Jim fights says a lot about where this conference is,” said Representative Brian Mast of Florida, who nominated Jordan to serve as minority leader, according to the Associated Press. “We’re a significantly more conservative conference than we were,” Mast added, pointing to the shape of the party after last week’s elections.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who backed Jordan, said Scalise had worked too closely with more moderate Senate Republicans over the course of Trump’s second term. “They called Scalise and actually brokered back-end deals,” Luna said, according to USA Today. “So we had no leverage. That’s why I’m supporting Jim Jordan.” She was one of many House Republicans who have expressed frustration with current leaders for not digging in to pass conservative priorities such as voting reforms.

Who is Jim Jordan?

James Daniel Jordan was born on 17 February 1964 in Troy, Ohio, and raised in Champaign County. Before entering politics he was a two-time NCAA wrestling champion at the University of Wisconsin and later worked as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1995. He won four Ohio high school wrestling championships and later earned a master’s degree in education from Ohio State and a law degree from Capital University in Columbus, according to Britannica and USA Today.

While Jordan was an assistant coach, Richard Strauss served as a team physician. Ohio State launched an investigation in 2018 into allegations that Strauss had sexually abused students during his years at the university. Several former wrestlers later alleged that Jordan must have known about inappropriate conduct involving Strauss, according to The New York Times, as reported by USA Today. Jordan has denied knowing about sexual abuse. 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,” according to USA Today. Jordan was deposed in 2025 as part of a federal lawsuit related to the Strauss scandal, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Jordan was elected to the Ohio House in 1994 and later served in the Ohio Senate before winning election to Congress in 2006, taking office in 2007. He has held Ohio’s 4th congressional district seat ever since, and in 2026 he comfortably won re-election against Democratic challenger Joshua Kolasinski, according to Britannica.

In Congress he quickly positioned himself on the right of the party. In 2015 he helped launch the House Freedom Caucus and served as its first chairman. The group emerged as a powerful bloc of House conservatives and helped pressure then-Speaker John Boehner before his resignation that year. Jordan also chaired the Republican Study Committee during the 112th Congress, from 2011 to 2013, according to Britannica.

He became one of Trump’s most prominent allies in Congress, defending him during investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. After the 2020 election, Jordan backed efforts to challenge the results and voted against certifying Electoral College votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania, according to USA Today.

Jordan has sought the top job in the House before. He ran for speaker in 2013 and 2015, receiving two votes and one vote respectively, and lost to McCarthy in the 2019 race for minority leader by 159 votes to 43, according to Britannica. His most consequential attempt came in October 2023, after McCarthy was removed as speaker. Trump endorsed Jordan, calling him a potential “GREAT Speaker of the House” in a social media post, according to Britannica. Jordan won the Republican nomination but failed to win the speakership in three rounds of voting on the House floor — 200, then 199, then 194 votes — as a bloc of moderate Republicans refused to support him, and his nomination was revoked. Johnson, a far less prominent but more broadly acceptable conservative, won the speakership shortly afterwards.

Three years later, the same combative style that cost him the speakership is what his colleagues have now rewarded. “When it comes to leadership, there’s no trait more important than communication,” Jordan told USA Today.

A smaller, more conservative conference

The election took place one week after voters handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections. According to USA Today, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who is in line to become speaker next year, said the 258 confirmed Democrats in the 435-member chamber will be the largest majority for either party this century. Other reports put the Democratic total at roughly 260 seats, the largest majority in 35 years, according to the Associated Press.

The result has reshaped the House Republican conference itself. As a result of the election, the conference is smaller, with a disproportionate number of moderates and swing-district lawmakers retiring or voted out, according to the Associated Press. Many of those returning were hungry for a new leader, and the remaining membership leans further to the right than the one that chose its leaders two years ago.

That shift was visible in the rest of Tuesday’s leadership elections as well. Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota was elected as the Republican whip, the number two position in the leadership hierarchy, beating Representative August Pfluger of Texas for the job. Representative Lisa McClain of Michigan won re-election as conference chair, the number three position, according to the Associated Press.

Emmer, who will be responsible for wrangling votes, struck a defiant note after the vote. “To our colleagues on the left, enjoy this honeymoon phase because come Jan. 3, 2027, you will regret ever putting your name on a ballot,” Emmer said, according to USA Today. McClain said after the “spirited leadership election” that the mission is to return to the majority. “We must and we will go on offense on day one,” McClain said, according to USA Today. “We’re going to challenge their policies.”

Representative Andy Harris of Maryland, the head of the Freedom Caucus, congratulated Jordan on social media. “A fierce fighter, uniter, principled conservative, and relentless advocate for the American people,” Harris said, according to USA Today. “Jim is exactly the right man for the job to fight back against the radical, crazy agenda of Democrats.”

Jordan’s elevation also reshuffles the House Judiciary Committee, which he has chaired since 2023. When the new Congress convenes in January, the committee gavel passes to the Democratic majority, and Jordan will lead the Republican opposition from the leadership’s office rather than from a committee chair.

What Democrats say

Democrats argued that Jordan’s selection showed Republicans had taken the wrong lesson from their election loss. “I would think that they would want somebody that was going to moderate towards what the voters want. They lost so many Republican voters,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, according to the Associated Press. “Obviously that’s not the case.”

“The House Republican caucus clearly chose the more extreme candidate,” said Representative Ted Lieu of California, vice chair of the House Democratic caucus, according to the Associated Press. “Hopefully, he’ll work with Democrats. We’ll see what happens.”

Democrats will hold their own leadership elections next week. Jeffries is expected to become the next House speaker, the first African American to hold the job, and Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts is expected to become the next majority leader. She would be the first woman to hold that position, according to the Associated Press.

Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans re-elected Senator John Thune of South Dakota as their leader by acclamation after a lengthy closed-door conference meeting on 10 November, according to reports from the day. The Senate picture is less settled on the Democratic side, where Senator Bernie Sanders has withheld his support for Chuck Schumer as Senate Democratic leader, according to the Seven Lights daily briefing.

The investigations ahead

Jordan takes the leadership at a moment when the incoming Democratic majority is preparing a wave of investigations into the Trump administration. The Associated Press reported that the party is preparing for “a flurry of Democratic investigations aimed at its standard-bearer” in the White House, and Jordan’s supporters made the case that his years of experience in oversight and judiciary fights made him the right person to lead the response.

“Instead of focusing on the people, it seems that the entire objective for Democrats is going to be targeted investigations,” said Luna, according to the Associated Press. “And Jim Jordan knows about weaponization.”

The backdrop is already visible. On Tuesday night, the House voted 211 to 204 to refer Representative Thomas Massie’s eight articles of impeachment against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to the Judiciary Committee, effectively shelving the measure for the remainder of this Congress. Trump celebrated the outcome on Truth Social as the “EXONERATION of a Great American Patriot”, according to the Morning Briefing newsletter. Jordan’s allies present the impeachment fight as a preview of the next two years: a Democratic majority using its subpoena and hearing powers against the administration, and a Republican minority led by a man who built his national profile doing exactly the same thing to Democrats from the other side of the dais.

The stakes for Trump are considerable. Jordan is not only a loyalist but one of the few Republicans in the House with the stature to speak for the party on national television without clearing his lines with the White House first. His selection signals that the conference intends to fight the coming investigations loudly, in public, and on Trump’s terms — rather than treating the next two years as a period of quiet rebuilding.

Analysis: Why It Matters

1. The party chose a fighter, not a peacemaker

Leadership elections after a defeat are usually a moment of reckoning, and the reckoning here points in one direction. Scalise offered the conference experience, fundraising muscle and a personal story of survival that few in American politics can match. He had raised nearly 68 million dollars for the midterms and had spent more than a decade in leadership. Jordan offered something else: a record of confrontation. The 106-73 margin was not close, and it was not a protest vote. It was a majority of the remaining conference saying that the answer to losing power is to fight harder for the voters who stayed, not to moderate in pursuit of the voters who left.

That is a consequential choice, because it settles the argument about what the midterms meant inside the Republican Party — at least for now. One reading of last week’s results is that voters punished the party for governing too aggressively, and that the path back runs through the centre. The other reading is that the party lost because it did not fight hard enough for its own agenda, and that a sharper, more disciplined opposition is the way back. By choosing Jordan over Scalise, House Republicans have endorsed the second reading. The risk is obvious: a conference that is already smaller and more conservative may become more so, and the voters it lost last week may stay lost. The gamble is that a clear, combative identity is worth more than a muddled attempt at appeal.

2. The Freedom Caucus has moved from insurgency to leadership

Jordan’s election is the culmination of a decade-long arc. When he co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015, it was an insurgent bloc of roughly forty members whose power came from its willingness to defy its own party’s leadership — most famously in the pressure campaign that pushed Speaker John Boehner to resign. For years the caucus was treated by the party establishment as a problem to be managed. Now its founder is the party’s leader in the House.

That transformation matters because it changes what the caucus is for. An insurgent bloc exists to say no; a leadership exists to set a strategy, hold a conference together and, eventually, win elections. Jordan’s record contains both instincts. He has been a disciplined tactician in committee, where he learned to use hearings as a platform, and he has been a purist who refused to compromise on the issues that defined the caucus. The question for the next two years is which of those instincts governs. A minority leader who treats the job as a permanent insurgency will keep his base energised and his conference small. A minority leader who learns to count votes, protect vulnerable members and pick winnable fights could rebuild the majority. Jordan’s own history suggests the first instinct comes more naturally; the job will test whether the second one exists.

3. The investigations war is about to become the main event

The most important fact about the next Congress may not be who leads either party but what the Democratic majority intends to do with its subpoena power. The Associated Press framed Jordan’s election against the prospect of “a flurry of Democratic investigations” aimed at the White House, and Jordan’s supporters were explicit that this was the reason to choose him. Luna’s comment — that Jordan “knows about weaponization” — captures the logic: the party wanted a leader who has spent years on the receiving end of investigations and on the giving end of them.

Jordan’s experience is genuinely relevant here. As the top Republican on Oversight and then as chairman of Judiciary, he ran some of the most aggressive Republican investigations of the Biden years and defended Trump through the Russia investigation, two impeachments and the January 6 inquiries. He knows how hearings work, how to use them to shape a news cycle, and how to absorb them when they are aimed at his own side. That knowledge will be tested immediately, because the Democratic majority will have the gavels, the subpoena power and a two-year window before the 2028 elections. The Hegseth impeachment vote on Tuesday night — 211 to 204 to shelve Massie’s articles — was a preview of the temperature. Jordan’s job will be to turn a defensive position into a counter-offensive, and to do it on television every day.

4. The 2028 problem starts now

Jordan inherits a conference that the Associated Press described as historically small, and the Associated Press noted that leading the party back to the House majority in 2028 “is sure to be a stiff climb, given the scope of Democratic victories in the midterms.” That is the quiet sentence at the heart of this story. The job Jordan has just won is not really about the next two years of legislating — a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate will pass what they want, and a Republican president in his final two years will veto what he does not. The job is about 2028.

The difficulty is that the qualities that win a leadership election inside a smaller, more conservative conference are not necessarily the qualities that win back suburban swing districts. Jordan represents Ohio’s 4th district, a safe seat he has held since 2007, and he has never had to win a competitive general election. The members he must now protect and recruit are precisely the moderates and swing-district lawmakers who were, in the Associated Press’s words, disproportionately “retiring or voted out” last week. Persuading strong candidates to run in districts the party just lost, and then protecting them from a primary challenge from their own right flank, is a different skill from the one Jordan has spent twenty years perfecting. Whether he can learn it will decide whether his leadership is remembered as a fighting retreat or a rebuilding.

5. Trump has his man — and that cuts both ways

Jordan is, by every account, Trump’s choice in spirit if not in formal endorsement. He was among the president’s most prominent defenders during the Russia investigation, he backed the challenge to the 2020 election results, and he voted against certifying the electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania. Trump endorsed him for speaker in 2023, calling him a potential “GREAT Speaker of the House”. For a president entering his final two years with a hostile Congress, having the House Republican leader be a loyalist rather than an independent operator is an asset: there will be no daylight between the White House and the House minority, and no second guessing of the president’s strategy in public.

But loyalty is a two-way street, and it carries a cost. A minority leader whose identity is bound up with the president cannot easily distance the party from the president’s unpopular decisions, and cannot credibly present the party as something new when the moment for renewal arrives. If the next two years go badly for Trump, Jordan will own them alongside him. If they go well, Jordan will share the credit — but the credit will belong to the president first. Jordan’s career has been built on the bet that closeness to Trump is the surest route to power in the Republican Party. On Tuesday, that bet paid off handsomely. The next two years will show whether it was a wise one.

What to Watch Next

1. The Democratic leadership elections next week. Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become speaker and Katherine Clark majority leader. The tone they strike — investigation-first or legislation-first — will set the terms of Jordan’s opposition.
2. Who chairs Judiciary for the Democrats. Jordan is leaving the committee gavel he has held since 2023. His successor on the Democratic side will be his direct counterpart in the investigations war, and the first hearings will show how aggressive that war will be.
3. The first Republican messaging votes. Emmer and McClain have promised to “go on offense on day one” and to challenge Democratic policies. Watch whether the minority can force votes that split the Democratic majority, or whether it is reduced to protest.
4. Jordan’s relationship with the Senate. Luna’s complaint — that Scalise brokered “back-end deals” with moderate Senate Republicans — suggests the House minority will be less willing to accept Senate compromises. With John Thune re-elected as Senate Republican leader, the two leaders’ ability to coordinate will matter.
5. The 2028 recruitment drive. Jordan’s real test is whether credible candidates agree to run in the swing districts the party lost last week. Early recruitment signals, and the fundraising numbers behind them, will be the first evidence of whether the party is rebuilding or retreating.
6. The Strauss questions. Jordan’s past as an Ohio State assistant wrestling coach, and his denial of knowledge about the abuse by team physician Richard Strauss, will resurface now that he holds a national leadership post. How he handles renewed scrutiny will be watched closely by both parties.

Sources

• Associated Press — “Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio elected to lead House Republicans in the minority”
• USA Today — “House Republicans elect Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan as next leader in shakeup”
• USA Today — “Who is Jim Jordan? What to know about the new GOP leader”
• New York Post — “Rep. Jim Jordan elected next House Republican leader after midterms blowout”
• Newsmax — “Jordan Defeats Scalise for House GOP Leadership”
• Britannica — “Jim Jordan | Ohio Representative, Wrestling, Freedom Caucus, Bid to Become Speaker”