Johnson Survives Greene’s Ouster Attempt as Democrats Join GOP to Kill It

WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday easily batted down an attempt by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to oust him from his post, after Democrats linked arms with most Republicans to fend off a second attempt by GOP hard-liners to strip the gavel from their party leader.

The vote to kill the effort was an overwhelming 359-43, with seven voting “present.” Democrats flocked to Johnson’s rescue, with all but 39 of them voting with Republicans to block the effort to oust him.

Members of the minority party in the House have never propped up the other party’s speaker, and when the last Republican to hold the post, Kevin McCarthy, faced a removal vote last fall, Democrats voted en masse to allow the motion to move forward and then to jettison him, helping lead to his historic ouster.

This time, the Democratic support made the critical difference, allowing Johnson, who has a minuscule majority, to avoid a removal vote altogether.

Eleven Republicans voted to allow Greene’s motion to move forward. That was the same number of Republicans who voted in October to allow the bid to remove McCarthy to advance — but back then, they were joined by every Democrat.

“I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort,” Johnson told reporters. “As I’ve said from the beginning and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job. I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was elected to do, and I’ll let the chips fall where they may.”

“Hopefully,” he added, “this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress.”

The lopsided vote solidified the dynamic that has defined Johnson’s speakership, like McCarthy’s before him: Each time the Republican leader has been faced with a critical task, he has relied on a bipartisan coalition of mainstream lawmakers to steer around far-right opposition and provide the votes to accomplish it.

The result has been the empowerment of Democrats at the expense of the hard right, the very phenomenon that Greene raged against as she rose on the House floor Wednesday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .