SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
House Republicans have a new leader, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JIM JORDAN: Over the next two years, House Republicans will fight for American families. When Democrats offer more government, we'll offer more freedom. And we will bring that fight in committee, on the floor and on the stump every single day.
PFEIFFER: Who is Jim Jordan, and what does his elevation say about how the Republican Party is responding to the midterm results? To answer that, we have NPR Congress reporter Sam Gringlas. Hi, Sam.
SAM GRINGLAS, BYLINE: Hey, Sacha.
PFEIFFER: When Jordan made his pitch for being the top House Republican at this moment, what was it?
GRINGLAS: Yeah, so - OK, so House Speaker Mike Johnson is stepping down from the job after the midterms. And so Jordan wrote this letter to his colleagues as he started vying for this job, and it gives us kind of a sense of what he was pitching to his colleagues. He called himself battle-tested when it comes to oversight. He wrote that offense not defense is what wins elections. And that, quote, "for far too long, we 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 Democratic party."
PFEIFFER: When he talks about being battle-tested and emboldened Democrats, it clearly sounds like he plans to be in battle with them or to continue to be in battle with them.
GRINGLAS: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: And the House, of course, is about to be controlled by Democrats. But what role does the minority leader have in trying to change that dynamic?
GRINGLAS: Yeah. So at a superhigh level, this job is about, I guess, leading the conference back to the majority, and that is not going to be easy if you think about how many seats Democrats flipped this fall. Another thing Jordan is going to have to do is drive the strategy to rebut these many investigations of the Trump administration that Democrats have promised they are going to commence on Day 1 as soon as they take control.
PFEIFFER: We heard Jim Jordan describe himself, but what is his reputation on Capitol Hill?
GRINGLAS: You hear him described as a hard-liner, a firebrand, a brawler. He has been a regular presence on Fox News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JORDAN: This 10-year attack on the president of the United States, on President Trump, started with Comey and the - and remember, he took the dossier that he knew was garbage.
GRINGLAS: He never served in the upper echelons of Republican leadership, but he's really become maybe best known for his combative performances in committee hearings, especially in his time chairing the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight Committee in the House.
PFEIFFER: And those hearings are a place where members of Congress often perform, maybe even showboat. Give us more of a sense of how Jordan has stood out when he's been on that stage.
GRINGLAS: Sacha, it's kind of funny. Jordan has actually become a little bit infamous on the Hill for taking his jacket off as things start to get heated in these hearings. His jacket even used to have its own account on Twitter, and he was asked about it once on C-SPAN.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JORDAN: I guess mostly it's because when I'm in committee, sometimes I get fired up at these witnesses who I think aren't being square with me.
GRINGLAS: Jordan was also this vocal defender of President Trump during his two impeachments.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JORDAN: And the president says - let me read it one more time. What do you want from Ukraine, Mr. President? I want nothing.
GRINGLAS: And you can hear in these hearings how hot he can get. Like, there's this one example when he was grilling Jack Smith earlier this year. Smith, of course, was the former special counsel appointed to investigate Trump's actions after January 6.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JORDAN: That's the degree the left and Democrats were willing to go to get President Trump, putting on the witness stand someone everybody knows is making it up.
GRINGLAS: And after the hearings, Jordan was the one who referred Smith to the Department of Justice for prosecution, accusing him of lying to Congress, a charge that Smith and his lawyers have refuted.
PFEIFFER: Jordan has been in Congress almost 20 years. Is that right?
GRINGLAS: Yeah. Yeah.
PFEIFFER: Can you fill in a little more of his backstory for us?
GRINGLAS: Yeah. So when you hear Jordan described as a brawler, his background as a college wrestler and then assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University makes a little bit of sense. That time at OSU, I should note, though, has come under scrutiny. Jordan has been accused of looking the other way from alleged abuse by the former team doctor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: While he was an assistant wrestling coach there, that he knew that he was allegedly the doctor molesting athletes.
GRINGLAS: And when those allegations surfaced in 2018, Jordan denied he knew what was going on. Jordan came to Congress in 2007. This was just around the rise of the Tea Party in the 2010 era, and he became the founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus around this time. Those members became a real pain in the butt for Republican leadership, you might remember. I mean, former Republican House Speaker John Boehner famously described Jordan as a legislative terrorist in his memoir and also in an interview with CBS.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SUNDAY MORNING")
JOHN DICKERSON: You call some of these members political terrorists.
JOHN BOEHNER: Oh, yeah - Jim Jordan, especially, my colleague from Ohio.
PFEIFFER: As Jordan rose through the ranks, as you just described it, how did his position in the Republican conference evolve?
GRINGLAS: So by 2023, you see Jordan run unsuccessfully for speaker of the House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PATRICK MCHENRY: The reading clerk will now call the role.
GRINGLAS: This was when Kevin McCarthy got ousted from the speakership.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MCHENRY: The Honorable Jim Jordan of the State of Ohio has received 199.
GRINGLAS: Jordan had Trump's endorsement back then. He didn't win, and eventually it went to Mike Johnson after those many, many record number of votes. In recent years, though, Jordan has become more of an ally to the leadership in House Speaker Mike Johnson. And by this year, he was campaigning and fundraising for Republican candidates across the country.
PFEIFFER: Sam, as you know well, the Republicans were so walloped in the midterms, yet President Trump has really projected this unbowed, uncowed sort of attitude coming out of the midterms. When we look at Jordan, who you've described as a firebrand and a brawler, what does his selection as minority leader say about how the caucus is responding to the Republican losses last week?
GRINGLAS: Yeah. I think this might be the most important takeaway of this conversation about who is Jim Jordan. The conversation of how to move forward from these losses has somewhat divided Republicans. The conference was split. I think it was 106 to 73 between Jordan and his opponent for leader, Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican and longtime member of leadership, who is maybe the more traditional pick. And you heard some members, like Republican Congressman Nathan Moran of Texas, describing their hesitations about Jordan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NATHAN MORAN: We saw independent and swing voters go with the Democratic side, and those are the voters we have to win back to win the 2028 election. It's clear now we're in a dogfight.
GRINGLAS: But that position does not seem to be what's winning out right now in the conference. I mean, right after the election, we saw President Trump appoint hard-liner Stephen Miller as chief of staff, and now this pick of Johnson shows Republicans are gearing up not to come to the center and work with Democrats to deliver bipartisan wins. They're going to double down, and they're going to fight. And I think you can hear that when you listen to members of Jordan's Freedom Caucus, like Congressman Keith Self of Texas.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KEITH SELF: That was a wave election. Moderates lost a lot of seats in this cycle. Trying to please everyone and play it safe did not protect them.
GRINGLAS: And, Sacha, this is a different tact from what's happening over in the Senate. Over there, the conference reelected John Thune to lead the Republicans. But unlike in the Senate, House Democrats don't really need help from Jordan or his party. Democrats could get, like, 260 members, a really healthy margin. And so it'll be much easier for Democrats to relegate Jordan and House Republicans basically to the corner.
PFEIFFER: That is NPR Congress reporter Sam Gringlas. Sam, thanks.
GRINGLAS: Thanks, Sacha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
