WASHINGTON — House Republicans have picked hardline Donald Trump supporter Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) to be their leader while in the minority next year.
Jordan beat Rep. Steve Scalise (La.) 106-73 in a secret-ballot election among House Republicans taking office next year in a Democratic-controlled Congress.
Putting Jordan in charge strongly suggests Republicans are not interested in distancing themselves from Trump after last week’s drubbing at the polls, which was a repudiation of the president and his war in Iran.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who will remain speaker until January, said Republicans picked Jordan specifically for his combative qualities.
“He’s a fighter and I think that’s the signal that is being sent here,” Johnson told reporters. “We are ready to dig in for a fight.”
Most of the more moderate House Republicans who were willing to break from the president on occasion were voted out of office last week and weren’t part of Tuesday’s internal Republican vote.
Even though he’s chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee and a close ally of the president, some lawmakers considered Jordan to be more of a “change” candidate than Scalise, since Scalise is part of the current leadership that steered the party into an electoral ditch.
As Judiciary Committee chair, Jordan helped oversee the failed impeachment effort against former President Joe Biden in 2023 and 2024. During Trump’s presidency, he has sought to portray the criminal prosecution of Trump during the Biden years as politically motivated. His committee recommended criminal charges against former special counsel Jack Smith for allegedly lying to the committee during testimony in December 2025.
Scalise and Jordan both ran for speaker in 2023 after Republicans took the gavel from then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). Republicans first picked Scalise to replace him, then he backed out and they nominated Jordan, but Jordan couldn’t get a majority on the House floor thanks to opposition from moderates. Republicans wound up with Johnson because he had made the fewest enemies in the conference.
Both minority leader candidates, as well as the candidates for lower-ranking leadership positions, pitched themselves as representing a new direction, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) said before the vote.
“They all present themselves as change candidates, and they’re all very careful not to discuss the president,” Lucas told HuffPost.
In one way, Jordan is an odd fit for a political era obsessed with “pedophile protectors” amid the ongoing fallout over the federal government’s years-ago initial failure to prosecute the late Jeffrey Epstein for sex-trafficking minors. Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University when a team doctor sexually abused student-athletes. He said he never knew of the abuse, though some former wrestlers said he should have. One lawmaker told HuffPost the Ohio State situation did not come up at all during the Jordan-Scalise contest.
Jordan spoke briefly to reporters after his election, saying little more than that Republicans would fight for American families for the next two years.
“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,” Jordan said.