The House GOP is trying to pick another Speaker nominee after Tom Emmer dropped out of the race earlier today. In the first round of closed-door voting, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson garnered the most votes:
- Mike Johnson: (LA): 85 votes
- Byron Donalds (FL): 32 votes
- Mark Green (TN): 23 votes
- Roger Williams (TX): 21 votes
- Check Fleischmann (TN): 10 votes
- Other: 31 votes
- Present: 2 votes
Since Fleischman received the lowest number of votes, he is out of the race.
Johnson is an outspoken evangelical Christian who has served as a trustee of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is a favorite of the Christian Right, especially the Family Research Council. In a 2016 interview he said, “My values follow the model of our Founding Fathers, I believe, and I think this is important…We were established as one nation under God. We are perilously close to forgetting that principle now – and we desperately need to return to this fundamental understanding.”