Marjorie Taylor Greene Fails to Oust Speaker Johnson

Speaker Mike Johnson easily defeated (May 8, 2024) an effort by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to remove him from the speakership. Democrats joined with most Republicans to prevent hard-line GOP members from removing their second party leader within a year. 

The vote to table the motion to declare the Office of Speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant, took less than two minutes and resulted in a decisive 359 “yea” to 43 “nay”, with seven members voting “present.”

Democrats overwhelmingly supported Mr. Johnson.  Historically, the minority party in the House has not supported the opposing party’s speaker. When Kevin McCarthy, the last Republican speaker, was up for removal, Democrats collectively voted to proceed with the motion, leading to his removal from speaker.  He resigned his seat in the House a few weeks later.

The New York delegation voted 21-5 to keep Johnson as Speaker.  The only “Nay” votes came from Velazquez (NY7), Clarke (NY(), Ocasio_Cortez (NY14), Bowman (NY16), and Ryan (NY18).  All the representatives from Western New York – Langworthy, Tenney, Morelle, and Kennedy – voted for the motion to table and to retain Johnson as Speaker.