By Randy Evans – Twice former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Speaker Tom Murphy faced challenges to their Speakerships from disgruntled Members of their respective caucuses in the United States House of Representatives and the Georgia House of Representatives. Tom Murphy survived both. Newt Gingrich was not so fortunate.

Current Georgia House Speaker Glenn Richardson has now gotten his first official challenge as Speaker. Blue Ridge Republican State Representative David Ralston has announced that he will challenge the Georgia House Speaker Glen Richardson.

There are only three ways to really challenge a Speaker. First, during the Session, a Member can move to vacate the chair, which is the Speaker. This was the strategy of the famous coup attempt in the summer of 1997 against Speaker Newt Gingrich by several Members of the House GOP including some of the House leadership. As it turns out, the bluff by the challengers was called by Speaker Gingrich after he learned of the attempt, and the effort fell apart.

Second, there can be a challenge within the majority party’s caucus. Basically, before each legislative session begins, each party in the house meets to elect their nominees to various positions in the house, including the Speakership. Since the majority party has the most votes, it is presumed that all of its Members will vote for and elect its nominee for Speaker. Twice, Democrats challenged former Speaker Tom Murphy from within his own caucus. Representative Al Burruss from Marietta (in the 1970s) and Representative Dubose Porter from Dublin (in the 1990s) both tried to take Speaker Murphy down. Both failed. Both learned first hand the old adage which is something like “if you throw a spear at the king, you had better kill him.”

Candidly, it is virtually impossible to defeat a sitting Speaker who has successfully defended his party’s majority. To successfully mount a bid to unseat a sitting Speaker, the challenger would have to muster over one-half of the majority caucus’ Members in support. Given that the sitting Speaker doles out committee assignments, wields enormous campaign fundraising prowess, and preserves political turf for Members, the chances of success for such a challenge are pretty slim. In the absence of defections by Members of the House Leadership, the chances are virtually nonexistent.

There have been no such defections among the ranks in the Georgia House Leadership. Moreover, Speaker Richardson has amassed a formidable political war chest to help other House GOP Members who stand with him. More significantly, he has wasted no time in racking up public endorsements for his reelection as Speaker that far exceed the one-half of the House GOP Conference that he needs.

Currently, Republicans have 101 seats, which means that Speaker Richardson needs only 51 votes to be reelected as the House GOP nominee for Speaker. He has 80 commitments. Basically, the chances that Representative David Ralston can beat him within the House Conference are nonexistent. There is, however, one other possible challenge that can be made to a sitting Speaker.

A House Member can lead a group of defectors who simply refuse to vote to reelect the Speaker. Unlike any other leadership position in the House of Representatives, the Speaker is elected by all of the House of Representatives. As a result, the Speaker must receive over one-half of all the House in order to be elected or reelected as Speaker.

Generally, it is presumed that all of the Majority Party will support its nominee and all of the Minority Party will vote for its nominee. Since the Majority Party has the most votes, the presumption is that its nominee wins.

But this is not always the case. In 1998, Congressman Bob Livingston led a group that insisted they would not vote for Speaker Newt Gingrich for reelection. Since the number of defectors exceeded the Republicans’ margin of control, they could have prevented Speaker Gingrich’s reelection as Speaker. No one will ever know whether the defecting Republicans would have followed through with their threat. Speaker Gingrich stepped down before the 106th Congress began.

In the Georgia House, it takes 91 votes to elect a Speaker. Could there be eleven (11) defections willing to jeopardize control of the Georgia House? Unlikely. Representative Ralston has already made clear that he has no intention of taking

his challenge to the floor of the Georgia House. After all what would it profit a man to topple a Republican Speaker only to land the Speakership in the hands of the Democratic Party.