Jim Jordan Still Thinks He’s Got a Shot (the Colleagues Who Were on the Receiving End of Threats, Less So) | Vanity Fair

By Bess Levin

On Wednesday, following two failed attempts to convince enough of his colleagues to let him have the leadership position, Jim Jordan hit pause on his quest to succeed Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. During a closed-door meeting, Jordan told Republicans that he would support giving interim Speaker Patrick McHenry the job through January 3 while attempting to shore up support to ultimately win the gig, according to The New York Times. How, exactly, will the representative from Ohio persuade a growing number of skeptical lawmakers that he’s the right person to lead the House? That’s not clear at this time, but one would hope it would not involve tactics from his allies like intimidating someone’s wife via anonymous text messages, as was apparently previously the case.

Representative Don Bacon told Politico this week that his wife had received numerous anonymous emails and text messages telling her: “Your husband better support Jim Jordan.” In one exchange, posted to X by reporter Olivia Beavers, an unidentified individual told Bacon’s spouse, “Your husband will not hold any political office ever again. What a disappoint (sic) and failure he is.” In another, she was told, “Talk to your husband tell him to step up and be a leader and help the Republican Party get a speaker there’s too much going on in the world for all this going on in the Republican Party you guys take five steps forward and then turn around take 20 steps backwards no wonder our party always ends up getting screwed over.”

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Bacon was not the only GOP lawmaker who reportedly received undue pressure from Jordan’s allies; other Republicans told Politico they were subject to “a barrage of calls from local conservative leaders.” Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks also claimed in a statement Wednesday that she had even “received credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls” after voting for someone other than Jordan. “One thing I cannot stomach, or support is a bully,” she wrote. Representative Mario Díaz-Balart expressed the same sentiment Monday, telling reporters, “If anybody’s trying to get my vote, the last thing you want to do is try to intimidate or pressure me because then I close out entirely.” And Representative Victoria Spartz similarly came out against the strong-arm tactics, reportedly saying, “I truly believe these intimidation techniques…are not acceptable.”

Republicans who spoke to Politico blamed the intimidation campaign on Jordan’s backers, and the outlet noted that, “by all accounts,” the Ohio rep wasn’t directly involved. But some believe he didn’t do enough to, per Politico, “tell allies to knock it off.”

On Wednesday, apparently seeking to distance himself from it all, Jordan took to X to write: “No American should accost another for their beliefs. We condemn all threats against our colleagues and it is imperative that we come together. Stop. It’s abhorrent.”