After House Majority Leader Steve Scalise withdrew from the contest on Thursday, Republican Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia is now running for Speaker of the House as a replacement for Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
In a Friday post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Scott stated his ambitions for the speakership: “I’ve submitted my application to become House Speaker. We are in Washington to enact laws, and I want to preside over a House that serves the interests of the American people to the greatest extent possible.
According to Scott, a supporter of outgoing Speaker Kevin McCarthy, “We have to do the right thing the right way.” Scott announced his candidacy to CNN. We as a conference are not currently engaging in that.
“I had no plans to do this when I got up this morning. We haven’t done any preparation, flogging, or anything else for this, so it took me a while to even go to my wife and tell her to call all our friends and be in prayer, he said on Friday.
Rep. Frank Lucas will propose him at the GOP conference meeting, according to Scott.
The seven-term lawmaker said on Thursday that the GOP’s failure to choose a new speaker “makes us look like a bunch of idiots.”
“We have a very small set of people who must get their way in everything. Both Speaker McCarthy and Steve Scalise were fine guys, but there was a cabal that undermined both, he claimed.
After McCarthy was removed from the position as speaker this month and decided not to seek reelection, Scott will face Jordan, who is also running for the speakership. After House Republicans failed to unite behind Scalise, who the GOP conference had chosen to replace Jordan as its nominee, he withdrew from the contest on Thursday.
Scott slammed the Republicans who supported McCarthy’s removal as speaker earlier this month and declared that Republican leadership “will have to decide to choose between holding these members accountable or lose the trust of the rest of the conference.”
He issued a statement saying, “The eight Republicans who backed Joe Biden and the Democrats’ desire to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker are nothing other than grifters who have given the Democratic Party control of the House in the name of their own glory and fundraising.”
Scott spent 20 years managing and running an insurance brokerage company after graduating from the University of Georgia with a bachelor’s in business administration. Before being chosen to serve in Congress in 2011, he began a career as a politician in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1997.
Scott, who represents Georgia’s 8th Congressional District, is a member of the House Agriculture, House Armed Services, and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.