Georgia Rep. Austin Scott, a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee, was shunted aside by fellow Republicans in his one-day bid to become speaker of the House. Scott, a mainstream conservative, said he would support Rep. Jim Jordan, who won the GOP nomination on a 121-81 vote, when the House votes this week on a successor to Kevin McCarthy.
“Our conference has spoken, and now we must unite behind Jordan so we can get Congress back to work,” said Scott. Jordan was a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and endorsed for speaker by former president Donald Trump. He became the GOP nominee after Majority Leader Steve Scalise concluded he did not have enough support to win a floor vote for speaker.
Democrat Tom Foley of Washington State, a former House Agriculture chairman, was the last rural leader to be elected speaker, in 1989. Former speaker John Boehner, an Ohioan, served on the Agriculture Committee but made his reputation as an engineer of the “Contract with America” that helped Republicans win control of the House in 1994 for the first time in four decades. Newt Gingrich, elected speaker as a result of the Republican takeover, has a minor link to the Agriculture Committee; his wife, Callista, was a clerk on the committee staff. McCarthy is from the Central Valley of California but was quiet on farm issues.
Members of the Republican and Democratic leadership routinely serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee, but not on the House committee. Its chairmen have to rely on conversations and personal relations with House leaders to advance legislation. By contrast, Senate leaders are hard-wired into Senate Agriculture Committee activities. On the committee roster at present are Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, No. 2 GOP leader Sen. John Thune, No. 2 Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin and Debbie Stabenow, third in the Democratic leadership as well as the committee chairwoman.
A backer of McCarthy before he was ousted, Scott said he ran for speaker to put the House back to work. “We are in Washington to legislate, and I want to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people,” he said. He called the Republicans who voted to depose McCarthy “nothing more than grifters.”
Scott, serving his seventh term representing a district in south-central Georgia, was described in published reports as a protest candidate and “a back-bencher focused on national security issues who never sought a leadership post.” Scott is sixth in seniority among Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee and No. 3 among Republicans on the Agriculture Committee.
In July, Scott suggested splitting the farm bill in two, with separate legislation for SNAP, which accounts for the bulk of spending, and for everything else. “Long term, that’s where we’re headed,” he said at a peanut grower conference. Farm bills traditionally combine farm subsidy and public nutrition programs to generate a coalition of rural and urban lawmakers to carry the must-pass legislation to bipartisan victory.