Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) explains why she contemplated supporting Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) in 2023 with an extremely rare crossover vote.
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As the votes to install then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) as House speaker crawled to a 14th consecutive failure in January 2023, salvation nearly came from a Democrat.
With McCarthy still unable to persuade a small band of Republican holdouts to hand him the gavel, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) seriously considered crossing party lines to provide the decisive vote that would make McCarthy speaker and end the chaos.
Kaptur, a 22-term member who is now facing a tough reelection fight in a conservative-leaning district around Toledo, said in an interview that she contemplated voting for McCarthy to get Congress “back to the business of the country.”
“This craziness makes us look ridiculous to the world, and it’s certainly ridiculous to the American people,” she said.
Her consideration of a crossover vote for speaker — a rare and politically perilous act that has occurred only once in modern congressional history, in 2001 — is among the most remarkable revelations in a new book published this week about McCarthy’s protracted battle for the job.
In his book “Glory, Grief and the Gavel,” McCarthy’s former floor director, John Leganski, recalls a conversation between Kaptur and Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) toward the end of the fourth day of unsuccessful votes. A group of far-right members had repeatedly denied McCarthy their support for the speakership as they extracted concessions that would empower them within the GOP caucus.
“Marcy, if you want, you can end this right now,” Turner told Kaptur, according to Leganski. “I’ll go to the well with you and we can change your vote and this will all be over.”
When Democrats caught wind that Kaptur was wavering, Leganski wrote, then-Minority Whip Katherine M. Clark (D-Massachusetts) “swooped in” and intercepted Kaptur, “angrily talking her out of the plan.”
Neither Turner’s nor Clark’s representatives responded to questions about the account.
Kaptur initially appeared reluctant to discuss it as well.
A spokesperson, Ben Kamens, provided a statement in which he touted Kaptur’s willingness to work in “a bipartisan fashion” but said she would “not partake in guessing games or sharing details of private member conversations.”
“Ms. Kaptur will not add to this conjecture and hearsay,” Kamens added.
But a Washington Post reporter spoke to Kaptur, who said she had not seen what Leganski wrote, as she left the House floor Thursday.
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Kaptur said she would have voted for McCarthy as part of a larger plan to restore “regular order” rather than to make a partisan point.
She said she hoped to bring together a half-dozen members in an independent caucus that could pull the narrowly divided House away from political extremism and toward function, but no Republicans would join her.
“I was trying to find a different fulcrum,” Kaptur said. “I tried to create a middle that could help move the institution to at least some level of sanity. I didn’t succeed. I couldn’t find partners to dance with.”
Kaptur said she approached several Republicans that she considered sensible, including Turner, about her plan. In the interview, she did not explain what else she believed they could accomplish besides getting McCarthy elected as speaker.
“They were not willing to do it,” Kaptur said. “And I thought, ‘Okay, so drown in your own chaos.’”
By the time Clark approached her, Kaptur said, it was already clear that her idea was not going to work.
“She must have seen me talking to somebody and so she came over and said, ‘Marcy, come on back to our side,’” Kaptur said. “I said: ‘I’m not not on your side. I’m trying to do something else.’ But it was too late.”
McCarthy eventually won on the 15th ballot, though his victory was short-lived. A handful of Republican rebels joined with Democrats, including Kaptur, to remove him from the position just nine months later.
The longest-serving woman in the history of Congress, Kaptur is running for reelection again in November. She faces a challenging campaign after the Ohio legislature last fall redrew her district, which voted for President Donald Trump in 2024, to lean even more Republican.
Kaptur said she did not consider at the time whether supporting McCarthy’s speakership bid might spark backlash among her Democratic base or boost her moderate credentials with Republicans. She noted that she has long been a political target for the GOP and survived because of her broad reach in her district.
“They can gerrymander me all they want. The problem is they’re not doing what they need to do to help the American people,” she said. “They want power, but they don’t really deliver.”
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