Who is Mike Johnson?
It is a 51-year-old politician, almost completely unknown to many, who now gets one of the most powerful positions in American politics. There were even other elected members of Congress—party colleagues of Johnson—who said when asked about him they had to Google it to get a better idea.
The deeply religious Mike Johnson has been a congressman since 2017 and represents a larger electoral district in Louisiana. In his home state, he has a background as an elected official at the state level, but has also worked as a lawyer within the organization Alliance Defending Freedom, where he made himself known as an opponent of same-sex marriage and abortion rights.
Since he was elected to the House of Representatives, he has kept a low profile – but at the same time has been influential in various ways.
He stands far to the right of the party, is closely allied with former President Donald Trump and was a driving force behind an effort to have the 2020 election results annulled in a number of key states. He was also one of the 147 Republicans who voted to void the election results.
To this day, he has not acknowledged that Joe Biden won the presidential election in a legitimate way, which is now pointed out by a number of Democrats after his appointment.
He was also part of the defense team when former President Donald Trump was impeached.
Within the party, he is seen as a person who can both win the trust of the members on the far right, as well as the more center-oriented Republicans.
Why has it taken so long to produce a new Speaker?
It took three weeks before the chaos was over and a number of different attempts were required to finally be able to appoint a chairman. Several of the much more well-known candidates who were first nominated have been forced to drop out after it became clear that they would not get enough support.
The turbulent process has put the finger on how divided the Republican Party is, where it has mainly been about the part of the party that stands farthest to the right. It was congressmen in that phalanx that sparked the crisis after turning against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy after he managed to get a temporary budget solution through talks with Democrats in early October.
Since the Republicans have such a small majority in the House of Representatives, there has not been much of a margin for the candidates that have been highlighted and it was only during the vote around Mike Johnson that he managed to get more votes than was required.
What is the Speaker’s task and what does the election mean for the House of Representatives’ ability to get started with its work?
After he is sworn in, he is immediately the one who rules the House of Representatives, but he also becomes number three in the order of succession to the presidency.
With the election of Johnson, the deadlock that halted much of the political work in the House of Representatives in October could begin again, which is expected to happen immediately with a scheduled vote on the chamber formally showing its support for Israel.
Among the two issues that we already know are also urgent, there is also the support package that the White House wants Congress to take up and decide on, which applies to both financial and military support to Israel and Ukraine.
But a critical task will also be to get work started on reaching a new budget agreement, after the temporary solution hammered out in early October expires on November 17. It will likely be one of Mike Johnson’s first major trials, which in the worst case could lead to a renewed threat that the American state apparatus is at risk of being shut down.
Johnson himself has said that one of his most important tasks will be to restore confidence in the elected representatives in the House of Representatives after the chaos of the last few weeks.