The memories of the speakership fights leading up to the Civil War remind us: The consequences of dysfunction in the federal government impact all of us.
In the first 72 years of Congress, a dozen speakers needed multiple ballots. Eight of them would serve only one term as speaker.The holder of that 1855 record for most votes was a member from Massachusetts named Nathaniel Banks but known for his alliterative nickname"bobbin boy" . Banks, just 39, was a member of the American Party, known for its nativist views on immigration.
So when Banks was seeking the speakership the voting began in December and ran into early February . Late in the game that winter, Banks' ultimate Democratic rival emerged: William Aiken Jr. of South Carolina. Aiken consolidated the Southern votes and seemed destined to win as the field was winnowed to the final few. Aiken was thought to have the commitments of several members whose previous choice had dropped out, but not all of those switches came through. Banks prevailed 103-100.
Cobb would be associated with the legislative landmarks of the 31st Congress: the Fugitive Slave Act and the Compromise of 1850, the last attempt of negotiators to settle the issue of slavery's expansion in the vast territories just acquired in the war with Mexico. For all her success as the first woman to be speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California was less dominant in her second tour in that role in 2019. That year she had 12 Democrats vote against her with three more voting"present." Two years later, Pelosi's Democrats barely hung on to the House majority even as Democrats were taking the Senate and the White House. Pelosi got another term as speaker by limiting her 2021 defections to five.
Even the legendary Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich, who ended 40 years of Democrats holding the big gavel, found it hard to hold onto it himself. His first re-election as speaker in 1997 occasioned a mini-rebellion of 10 GOP members voting for other people, voting present or not voting.
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