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The refusal by roughly two dozen Republicans to elect him as speaker last year was the impetus for Jordan to get serious, spending time away from Washington campaigning for Republicans and cutting fundraising checks to colleagues for the first time.
This cycle, Jordan has given to 23 Republicans representing swing districts since October 2023 — when Jordan lost his speakership race — through June 2024, which is the last time campaign finance reports were filed to the Federal Election Commission.
One of the people Jordan donated to for the first time is Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a moderate who represents a district Biden won by more than 6 percent in 2020. Bacon voted against Jordan for speaker last year and received threatening phone calls and emails because of it, an episode that further soured their already frosty relationship.
Now, Bacon says he’s appreciative of Jordan’s financial support this year. “I’m grateful to him,” he said.(so they have to buy them off to get support, congress is a freakin mess)
Jordan has shocked many pragmatic Republicans who supported his candidacy — including moderate Rep. Dave Joyce (R), a fellow Ohioan — by cutting checks for their campaigns for the first time. Jordan also donated to Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), an influential committee chairman, who was challenged by a far-right candidate supported in the primary by the Freedom Caucus’s political arm.
Jordan has also been campaigning for members, who often invite him to their districts to rile up the GOP base.
“I think Jim’s perspective [is] if Trump is president and we have a slim majority, he could be the right conduit and protection between those two — our body in the slim majority and the MAGA Republican constituency. And I would say that he’s intimated that without saying it,” Molinaro said earlier this year.
It would be quite the pivot. Jordan was elected in his conservative district in 2006. In his first term, he led a group of antiestablishment Republicans to tank President George W. Bush’s Wall Street bailout during the 2008 financial crisis. He sharpened his claws on conservative media and built a reputation as a foil not only against Democrats, but also against leadership in his own party.
In 2015, he co-founded the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus to represent a new generation of rugged, just-say-no Republicans who blocked compromise, pressured two GOP speakers — Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and John Boehner (Ohio) — to resign, and refused to help his less dogmatic Republican colleagues win reelection, including by refusing to pay mandatory dues to the House Republicans’ campaign arm.
Not everyone will be ready to work with him. Some Republicans still remain irate and may not ever support him in leadership because of how he comported himself during the last speakership election.After a bitter falling out during the speakership fight last year, Jordan refused to fully endorse Scalisewhen the conference elected their majority leader to succeed McCarthy, which prompted a backlash among ardent Scalise allies. And Jordan’s allies on the Hill and across conservative media made matters worse by threatening lawmakers to vote against the Ohio congressman for speaker, some of whom received death threats for their opposition. Jordan denounced the threats at the time.
Others just don’t trust Jordan given how he had notoriously shunned helping out his non-Freedom Caucus colleaguesthroughout his early career in Congress. His scorched-earth tactics and refusal to be a team player and contribute to the party’s campaign coffers drew the ire of many colleagues who believed that he contributed to Republican losses in close races. Those actions set the example for a larger crop of far-right members who still refuse to donate to the NRCC and now campaign against GOP colleagues in primary elections, helping to drive intraparty divisions.
But several lawmakers who were skeptical of him last year have become more open-minded about the idea because Jordan could play the role of messaging bulldog in the minority, especially if Vice President Kamala Harris becomes president.
“I never close the door on things,” said Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.). “For me and Jordan, it was never personal. I just didn’t support him, that’s all.”
https://archive.is/JrhWP
(Congress operates like the mafia)