By Burgess Everett, Ursula Perano and Daniella Diaz

With assists from POLITICO’s Congress team

Senior GOP senators said they believe Jim Jordan’s come a long way from his Freedom Caucus founding days. | APFrancis Chung/POLITICO

JORDAN COULD SMOOTH HOUSE-SENATE TENSION

Jim Jordan’s a 2020 election objector who opposed last month’s stopgap spending bill and is skeptical of new Ukraine aid. That makes him the near-opposite of Senate GOP leadership.

And yet Senate Republicans will take what they can get after the past month of absolute disarray in the House and the party. GOP senators have not been shy about their distaste for the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. So they’re hoping that Jordan can impose some order — and that his popularity with conservatives will cut him extra slack to reach a deal on government spending ahead of next month’s shutdown deadline.

In interviews on Monday evening, senior GOP senators said they believe Jordan’s come a long way from his Freedom Caucus founding days — and they largely welcomed the growing likelihood of him becoming speaker as soon as midday Tuesday.

Hoping to end the ‘nonsense’: As Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) put it in perhaps wishful-thinking terms, Jordan has “evolved.” The real question for Tillis is whether those eight Republicans who tossed McCarthy have “learned from their mistakes, and in my opinion, an embarrassment of leadership,” Tillis said.

“We can't have this nonsense of a handful of people questioning a speaker every time we have to deal with difficult subjects,” Tillis added as he ducked into Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s suite for a leadership meeting. “So, give him a shot. This is not about Jordan. This is about a handful of people either providing a reasonably competent person to govern or not.”

Much has been made of Jordan’s evolution from backbench bomb-thrower to someone who worked closely with McCarthy. But should Jordan ascend to the speakership, he’ll face an all-new governing challenge when it comes to dealing with McConnell’s senators.

Navigating the nearly ungovernable House GOP is one problem that Jordan may be prepared for. It’s not yet clear, though, how he’d work with McConnell to find unified Republican positions on major issues -- a task that occasionally bedeviled the party when McCarthy was speaker and minority leader.

“Governing is harder than being in the minority and just kind of criticizing others. I’ve been impressed with the job he’s done as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. And certainly, as one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus he’s come a long way,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of Jordan.

Asked if Jordan will be able to cut deals successfully on government funding, Cornyn said: “It all remains to be seen, but I give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Hello, my name is Jim: McCarthy didn’t exactly spend hours upon hours strategizing with Senate Republicans, though he did meet with McConnell regularly. Jordan will have even more work to do, since many top Senate Republicans – even if they served in the House – will have to establish newfound relationships with him.

NRSC Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.), a former House member, gave perhaps the strongest endorsement of the possible new speaker among party leaders on Monday night, declaring that he’s “got a lot of confidence in Jordan.”

“He’s a born leader, he’s smart, and I think if he’s elected speaker he’s going to do a great job,” Daines said.

Republicans will find out soon if that’s the case. Government funding will expire exactly a month after Tuesday’s speaker election.

“I’d rather see a centrist than someone who's been a part of a small subsection of the House. But that’s their choice,” retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said.

– Burgess Everett and Ursula Perano

A message from Electronic Payments Coalition:

Don’t Let Durbin-Marshall Steal YOUR Data: Senators Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall introduced legislation allowing big-box retailers like Walmart and Target to process credit card transactions based solely on what is cheapest for them, disregarding YOUR data security. Durbin-Marshall would shift billions in consumer spending to higher-risk payment networks, weakening America’s payment system and putting consumers in a vulnerable position. Last year, Congress wisely rejected a similar Durbin-Marshall bill, and they must do so again.

GOOD EVENING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Monday, Oct. 16 where all eyes are on tomorrow’s speaker’s race.

THE MAYBE SPEAKER-IN-WAITING’s BIDEN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT CARD

As Jordan goes for the speakership, he’s made a point to tout his track record as the lead on nearly every politically charged investigation during the Trump and Biden eras on Capitol Hill.

Since Jordan ascended to the Judiciary Committee chairmanship this year, his probes have issued 45 subpoenas, conducted or scheduled more than 80 transcribed interviews and depositions, held 48 hearings and compiled 260,107 pages of documents, according to data his team shared with POLITICO.

The numbers hint at Jordan’s main selling point: his tough stands against alleged Democratic corruption, particularly claims of politicization inside the federal government. The Ohioan has built a powerful brand on the right as a partisan warrior, one that’s helped make him the odds-on speaker favorite.

But when it comes to both the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and claims of politicizing the government, Jordan’s House Republicans have yet to find a smoking gun — or anything close.

Not that it matters to many admiring fellow Republicans. If you doubt the power of Jordan’s reputation in his party, just listen to how Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) described the Jordan-Kevin McCarthy dynamic to us, almost exactly one year ago. Gaetz, who unleashed the former speaker’s ouster less than two weeks ago, compared McCarthy outranking Jordan to “watching Tom Brady sit on the bench, while Drew Bledsoe mismanages the offense.”

Translation for non-football fans: It doesn’t matter to conservatives that Jordan’s pugilistic approach has yet to land any major blows in the House GOP’s nascent Biden impeachment inquiry.

– Kyle Cheney and Jordain Carney

A message from Electronic Payments Coalition:

JORDAN’s PITCH TO CARDINALS: CUTS, NO SHUTDOWN

Top GOP appropriators like Reps. Ken Calvert (Calif.) and Robert Aderholt (Ala.) have already flipped from Jordan skeptics to backers. But other “cardinals” in senior government spending positions, like Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Steve Womack (R-Ark.), remain staunch holdouts in the never-Jordan camp.

Jordan’s stated strategy for avoiding a shutdown next month likely won’t sway them much.

Jordan’s pitch: The Freedom Caucus stalwart has pitched lawmakers on a long-term spending plan that would allow a 1 percent slice from government funding to kick in at the end of April. That provision, negotiated as part of the debt limit deal earlier this year, was supposed to push Congress to pass a government funding deal before January.

The idea was that no lawmaker in either party would want to trigger those across-the-board cuts, and so all sides would be incentivized to find a solution.

But Jordan embraces the power of that cliff, since the threat of slashing federal budgets next spring would force the White House and Senate to negotiate their way out of the pain.

“I’ve always thought our ultimate leverage was the [provision forcing] a 1 percent cut. No appropriator wants to do that. Democrats certainly don’t want to do it. The administration doesn’t want to do it,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in a recent interview.

“So I think it’s a good place for us to bargain against,” Cole added. “I think [Jordan] laid out a very compelling case.”

What this means: Setting aside the fact that Senate Democrats and the White House won’t like Jordan’s plan — and the government could very well shut down next month as a result — his strategy is a curious one for the vast majority of Republicans. The party would be loath to see the Pentagon operate under stagnant funding and then suffer a major cut next year.

Some ultraconservatives, though, would be fine with an across-the-board cut, even to defense. Regardless, Jordan would ultimately find himself having to negotiate a bipartisan government funding deal that his Freedom Caucus colleagues would probably hate. And we’ll be watching whether they cut him any slack, especially after ousting McCarthy.

“This is the time for us to drive a hard bargain and get the areas we think need to be increased — including the border, especially — but defense and veterans, and hold the line on other things,” Cole said.

— Caitlin Emma, Daniella Diaz and Jennifer Scholtes

A message from Electronic Payments Coalition:

CONGRESS: Don’t Let Durbin-Marshall Steal YOUR Data:
Cyber-attacks against consumers are on the rise, with large retailers like Target falling victim to breaches that expose customer information to hackers and foreign countries.

Now, mega-retailers like Walmart and Target want to leave you even more vulnerable to credit card cyber-attacks so they can pocket billions of dollars in additional profits.

After Senator Dick Durbin passed similar routing mandates for debit cards in 2010, the fraud rate for debit cards increased by NEARLY 60%. A similar outcome for credit cards would likely cost OVER $6 BILLION in additional fraud and likely require passing much of the bill onto consumers.

Last year, Congress wisely rejected a similar Durbin-Marshall bill, and they should do so again. Congress must protect consumers, preserve the integrity of the payment ecosystem, and reject this detrimental and unnecessary government intervention into the U.S. payment system.

Insert joke here about the day before the speaker vote being #WorldSpineDay.

QUICK LINKS 

At Menendez’s Island Resort Fund-Raiser, Donors Were Scarce. So Was He, from Luis Ferré-Sadurní at The New York Times

Jordan's wall of opposition starts to crumble, with 24 hours before speaker vote, from Sarah Ferris, Olivia Beavers and Jordain Carney

Laphonza Butler knows how to amass quiet power. Will she win in the public arena? From Noah Bierman, Taryn Luna, Matt Hamilton, Seema Mehta at The Los Angeles Times

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TRANSITIONS 

Rosemary Boeglin is now communications director for the Democratic National Committee. Boeglin most recently was comms director for Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

TOMORROW IN CONGRESS

The House is in session.

The Senate is in session.

TUESDAY AROUND THE HILL

A speaker’s vote at noon!

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