U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana will captain the right wing of the House Republicans in the next Congress, as he won a surprising result Thursday against Rep. Tom Graves of Ranger.
Scalise captured the Republican Study Committee chairmanship with an outsider campaign after the second-term Graves won the key support of the group’s founders and past chairmen. Scalise, who just won his fourth term, was seen as closer to House leadership and signaled that he was less likely to openly defy Speaker John Boehner.
It marked the second consecutive day a more conservative Georgian lost a GOP caucus vote; on Wednesday, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state beat Rep. Tom Price of Roswell for conference chairman.
Graves and Price have two of the most conservative voting records in Congress and often buck the leadership.
Graves congratulated Scalise in a prepared statement.
“This was a hard-fought race,” Graves said. “And as one who believes that iron sharpens iron, I trust that this process has forged me into a better Member of Congress.”
The RSC had 164 members in the last Congress — the bulk of the House Republicans — but some left office and new members arrived, including Rep.-elect Doug Collins of Gainesville, who backed Graves. The group includes many members who often clash with leadership, but not all do: Majority Leader Eric Cantor counts himself as an RSC member.
Scalise said the RSC will remain the “conservative rudder” for House Republicans.
“There are going to be times where we disagree with our leadership, but ultimately we’ve got to work hard to pull our leadership to the right and move a conservative agenda forward and unite as conservatives if we’re going to get things done,” Scalise said.
Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County called the vote “a shock,” considering that Graves had the institutional support of past RSC chairmen — including Price. He said that even if Scalise wanted to take the group in a different direction it would not be easy.
“You don’t take this group in any direction,” Westmoreland said. “They go on their own. It really is. This group is a lot more varied thinkers and stuff. Even though they’re all conservative people, it’s really hard to get a consensus among all of them, such as the fact that when we vote for an RSC budget we don’t get the full complement of RSC members even to do that. It’s a pretty diverse little group.”
And after a pair of his delegation colleagues lost tough races, Westmoreland jokingly wondered whether there’s a Georgia curse: “I told Graves and Price I’m going to move somewhere if I ever decide to run for anything.”
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