Scalise or Jordan? House Republicans choose who leads them into the minority

The week the House Republicans lost the gavel; and started choosing who leads them without it

American voters handed both chambers of Congress to the Democrats in the midterm elections of Tuesday 3 November 2026, and within a day the Republican leadership of the House began to come apart. Speaker Mike Johnson told his staff on Wednesday 4 November that he would not seek the post of minority leader in the next Congress. Within hours, the two men who fought for the speakership three years ago had entered the race, Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, and the Republican conference will choose between them in a secret ballot on Tuesday 10 November. The Senate holds its own leadership elections the same day, although there the contest is quieter: Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota is seeking to keep his post, and no challenger has emerged in public.

The Democrats will hold at least 54 of the 100 Senate seats and at least 254 of the 435 House seats when the 120th Congress is sworn in, in January. President Donald Trump, who conceded after the vote that his deportation drive had cost his party support, said his immigration policy had been “too tough” for voters.

Two rivals, one vacancy, and a ballot on Tuesday

The biggest contest is for House minority leader. Scalise has held senior Republican leadership posts for more than a decade; House majority whip from 2014 to 2018, minority whip from 2019 to 2022, and majority leader since 2023. He presents himself as the experienced hand who can hold a diminished conference together and steer it back to a majority, writing to colleagues that his “number one goal as Republican Leader will be to win back the majority”. Jordan, a founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and a close ally of the president, is campaigning on the opposite instinct: a more aggressive posture towards the Democratic majority, and a leader who can coordinate the party’s response to the investigations Democrats plan into the Trump administration.

The two men have been here before. Both sought the speakership after the House removed Kevin McCarthy in October 2023, and neither could assemble the votes: Scalise won the conference nomination and then withdrew after allies of Jordan blocked him, Jordan failed on three ballots, and Johnson emerged as the compromise. This time only Republican members vote, in a secret ballot, and the winner needs a simple majority of the conference; candidates had until Friday 6 November to declare. Freedom Caucus chairman Andy Harris has endorsed Jordan. Trump, asked about the contest on Wednesday, said he would “stay out of it”.

The minority whip contest pits the current majority whip, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, against August Pfluger of Texas, who chairs the Republican Study Committee and argues the party needs “fresh ideas” to win the House back in 2028. Conference chair Lisa McClain of Michigan is seeking re-election, challenged by Erin Houchin of Indiana and Greg Steube of Florida. In the Senate, Thune, who succeeded Mitch McConnell as Republican Senate leader in 2025, is seeking to retain the post and would become minority leader in January; so far he faces no public challenger, But Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is pressing to delay the Senate vote to allow more time to assess the results, with support from Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

What Tuesday’s ballot still leaves open

Who wins is unknown, and so is what the win would mean. Neither Scalise nor Jordan has a publicly confirmed endorsement from the president, and Trump’s decision to stay out of the race, if it holds, leaves the conference to settle the argument itself. The final seat counts are still being tallied, so the exact size of the Republican minority is not yet fixed. It is also unknown whether the Senate will vote on Tuesday as scheduled or whether Johnson’s delay campaign gathers enough support to push it back. Beyond the leadership posts, the committee chairs who will run the party’s day-to-day work in the minority have yet to be chosen, and what role, if any, Johnson will seek once he leaves the speakership is unresolved.

Because the minority leader decides what the opposition is for

The post at stake is not ceremonial. The minority leader is the party’s chief spokesperson in the chamber, coordinates its legislative strategy and negotiates with the majority; and in this Congress the negotiation will be with a Democratic majority that has promised investigations into the Trump administration and a legislative programme of its own. The leader chosen on Tuesday will decide how much of the next two years is spent fighting those investigations, how much is spent trying to shape Democratic bills from the minority, and how much is spent on the slow work of winning the House back in 2028. That choice is also a verdict on the president: a Jordan victory would signal a party that wants a fighter at the front of its defence of Trump, while a Scalise victory would signal a party that wants an organiser who can keep a fractious conference united. And it matters beyond Washington, because every foreign capital must now deal with a divided American government.

A fighter or an organiser: the conference has to pick a theory of the minority

Read as a contest between two men, the race is close and personal: two rivals who blocked each other in 2023, now meeting again with the stakes reversed; then they fought over who would govern, now they fight over who will oppose. Read as a contest between two theories, it is sharper. Scalise’s theory is that a minority survives by discipline: hold the conference together, pick the fights that can be won, and keep the focus on the seats that must be retaken in 2028. Jordan’s theory is that a minority survives by confrontation: the Democrats are coming with subpoenas, and the party needs a leader who has spent years running the Judiciary Committee and knows how to fight an investigation from the inside. His endorsement from the Freedom Caucus chairman tells the same story,, “battle-tested”, a “staggering day”, is pitched at members who feel the defeat as a wound to be answered.

The Senate, by contrast, is choosing not between theories but between speeds; Thune unchallenged, Barrasso expected to stay, and the only live question whether to vote now or reflect first. Trump, for his part, has vowed a comeback and a bitter showdown with the new Congress, which means the leader chosen on Tuesday will be working for a president who intends to fight the majority, not accommodate it.

What the choice on Tuesday sets in motion

The first consequence lands in January, when the new Congress is sworn in and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, is expected to take the speaker’s gavel. The first test will be the investigations Democrats have promised into the administration: who coordinates the Republican response, and whether the party treats those hearings as a legal threat to be managed or a political stage to be fought on, will be decided by the winner’s instincts. The second consequence is legislative. A Democratic majority of at least 254 seats can pass bills without Republican votes, but it still needs the Senate and the president; and a minority leader who chooses negotiation over obstruction can shape what reaches the floor, while one who chooses obstruction can force the majority to own every vote. The third consequence runs to 2028: the leader’s first job, by Scalise’s own account, is to win the majority back,

Tuesday’s ballot, then January’s reckoning

House and Senate Republicans vote on Tuesday 10 November. The winner of the House contest becomes the party’s nominee for speaker and its minority leader when the 120th Congress convenes in January, when Jeffries is expected to be elected speaker by the full House. The whip, conference chair and committee posts follow in the same round of internal elections, and the Senate decides whether to vote on schedule or heed the calls for delay. After that, the new leadership’s first decisions will be about people and posture: who runs the committees, how the party answers the first Democratic investigations, and whether the road back to a majority runs through confrontation or through rebuilding. The Democratic gains reached beyond Congress: Democrats flipped five attorney general offices in Republican states.