When Harriet M. Hageman introduced her 2022 major problem in opposition to Consultant Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Home Republican leaders rapidly endorsed her bid to oust a colleague whose condemnations of former President Donald J. Trump had made her a pariah in her personal get together.
However one member of management remained notably silent: Consultant Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican. He seen backing Ms. Hageman as a violation of what he calls his eleventh Commandment, borrowed from President Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not converse unwell of one other Republican.” He waited till Ms. Hageman had defeated Ms. Cheney to throw his assist behind her.
Mr. Scalise, a longtime rival to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is now mounting his personal bid for the submit. He has pitched himself as the person uniquely positioned to unite Republicans at a second when they’re deeply divided and demoralized after Mr. McCarthy’s historic ouster final week.
“We’re so divided; he can unite this Congress,” Consultant Lance Gooden of Texas mentioned of Mr. Scalise.
His candidacy is the fruits of a gradual political climb for a deeply conservative Republican who as soon as described himself, in accordance with an area columnist, as “like David Duke without the baggage.”
In Louisiana, Mr. Scalise represents the First Congressional District, a spot the place the fossil gas trade is king, and the place conservatism is rooted within the delusion of rugged individualism — and, not less than in some quarters, a politics of racial resentment. It’s the place Mr. Duke, the previous Ku Klux Klan chief, was elected to the State Legislature in 1989.
Mr. Scalise has urged that his life and political profession have been influenced by these forces. He made the remark comparing himself to Mr. Duke to Stephanie Grace, now a columnist for The Instances-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate newspaper, when she first met Mr. Scalise within the Nineteen Nineties. She wrote that Mr. Scalise’s level “was that the precise governmental philosophy Duke espoused isn’t far off from what was turning into mainstream conservative thought, what with its suspicion of taxes, set-asides and security internet packages corresponding to welfare.”
(Over the weekend, Ms. Grace endorsed Mr. Scalise for speaker.)
Many years later, these views are as highly effective as ever within the Republican Occasion as Mr. Scalise faces off for the speakership against Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founding father of the ultraconservative Home Freedom Caucus.
Mr. Scalise is making the run regardless of having been diagnosed only weeks ago with blood cancer, for which he has been present process therapy. His supporters insist it has not diminished his capability for the job.
A key plank of Mr. Scalise’s pitch to his colleagues is that he’s a fund-raising powerhouse, second solely to Mr. McCarthy. He has raised almost $170 million over the course of his congressional profession to assist Republicans win elections. Within the 2022 midterm elections, Mr. Scalise spent 112 days on the street campaigning for members and candidates. Over the previous 5 years, his workplace mentioned, he has given $7.2 million on to Republican members and candidates and transferred $50 million to the Nationwide Republican Congressional Committee.
“Kevin McCarthy was fabulous at elevating the assets our convention wanted,” mentioned Consultant Ann Wagner of Missouri. “The one individual second to that’s Steve Scalise.” Ms. Wagner, a longtime ally of Mr. Scalise, mentioned she had accompanied him on fund-raising swings by which he visited greater than a dozen districts in three days.
Over the previous 12 months, Mr. Scalise has been marginalized by Mr. McCarthy, who has privately described him to colleagues as ineffective, checked out and reluctant to take positions, and lower him out of all main choice making.
The dynamic was irritating for Mr. Scalise on the time. However now, his allies imagine that the truth that he was not concerned within the debt ceiling negotiations with President Biden, which in the end proved to be a catalyst for Mr. McCarthy’s downfall, might make him a viable possibility for the hard-right members who rebelled in opposition to the previous speaker.
Whereas most far-right Republicans are anticipated to again Mr. Jordan on Tuesday when they’re scheduled to decide on a nominee for speaker, Mr. Scalise is imploring them to assist him as a second selection. Underneath the present guidelines of the Republican convention, whoever receives a majority in that secret-ballot vote would be the get together’s nominee when the complete Home meets to elect a brand new speaker, now anticipated on Wednesday.
Lawmakers allied with Mr. Jordan try to boost that threshold to unanimity, which might put Mr. Scalise at a drawback. For now, nonetheless, Mr. Scalise has been telling right-wing lawmakers that whereas he needs he may very well be their first selection, he hopes that if he emerges because the nominee, they are going to not less than vote for him on the ground.
His pitch to different Republicans is extra simple. Mr. Jordan, who has been endorsed for the speakership by Mr. Trump, would have a harder time serving to weak Republicans win in districts President Biden received in 2020, particularly when Mr. Jordan supported major opponents for 12 sitting members of Congress.
Mr. Scalise arrived on Capitol Hill in 2008, after profitable a particular election to switch Consultant Bobby Jindal, who was elected governor.
A political animal since childhood, he got here to Washington desirous to be part of the whole lot: He joined the Bible research group and the congressional baseball group, the place he would play in a Louisiana State College baseball jersey and purchase tickets for all of his workers members and their children. He pushed for a seat on the Vitality and Commerce Committee, the place he turned a powerful ally of the oil and fuel trade. And he rapidly rose to change into the recruitment chair of the Nationwide Republican Congressional Committee after which chairman of the Republican Research Committee, then the most important group of conservative Home Republicans.
Mr. Scalise, the primary individual in his household to graduate from faculty, grew up in Jefferson Parish, within the suburbs simply exterior of New Orleans, a area the place the inhabitants ballooned within the latter half of the final century as white residents fled the desegregating metropolis. Born right into a household of Sicilian immigrants, Mr. Scalise used to inform workers members tales about how his ancestors labored within the sugar fields in Garyville, La.
His rise in Washington was fast. By 2014, he had ascended to the No. 3 place within the Home. Then a blogger broke the story that as a state legislator in 2002, Mr. Scalise had spoken at a gathering of a white nationalist group based by Mr. Duke, a revelation that threatened to derail his political profession.
Underneath intense stress from Democrats to step down, Mr. Scalise mentioned the speech was a “mistake I regret,” claiming he didn’t understand what the group was when he accepted the invitation. On the time, he obtained a big nod of assist from his previous buddy Cedric Richmond, then a congressman from New Orleans, who’s Black.
“I don’t suppose Steve Scalise has a racist bone in his physique,” Mr. Richmond mentioned then. (Mr. Richmond couldn’t be reached for remark about Mr. Scalise’s run for the speakership.)
In 2020, Mr. Scalise voted to remove Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol, breaking with a majority of his get together, together with Mr. Jordan.
Nonetheless, Mr. Scalise most frequently sides with Republicans. He pushed exhausting for the passage of laws in 2015 that resulted within the repeal of a 40-year ban on oil exports, handing the oil trade an enormous victory. He additionally performed a significant function in 2017 in muscling by Republicans’ $1.5 trillion tax cut law, which primarily benefited big corporations, multimillionaires and other wealthy individuals. A supporter of Mr. Trump, he voted to overturn the 2020 election outcomes and for months afterward steadfastly promoted the lie that the election had been stolen.
In 2017, Mr. Scalise was gravely wounded when a gunman, distraught over Mr. Trump’s election, opened hearth on members of the Republican congressional baseball group at a observe. The bullet tore up his inner organs, shattered bones and triggered main inner bleeding, leaving Mr. Scalise in important situation.
He needed to endure a number of surgical procedures and months of labor at an inpatient rehabilitation heart to relearn methods to stroll. He returned to the Capitol three months later, strolling gingerly with two canes.
“I’m undoubtedly a dwelling instance that miracles actually do occur,” he mentioned on the time. Right this moment, Mr. Scalise seems nearly absolutely healed. With the assistance of a shoe with a lifted sole, his gait is now regular.
In August, Mr. Scalise introduced that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer however deliberate to return to Washington to proceed working as he underwent a number of months of therapy.
Colleagues mentioned that a part of his pitch to them over the previous few days was that the therapy was going higher than his docs had anticipated and he was in form to do the job.
“They’ve modified his therapy and shortened right into a three-month time period, down from six,” mentioned Ms. Wagner, a detailed buddy. Each Mr. Scalise’s spouse, Jennifer, and his docs, she added, “have agreed that he’s greater than wholesome sufficient for this problem.”
It’s not clear exactly what toll his sickness and therapy have taken on Mr. Scalise. He has taken to carrying a heavy-duty masks at information conferences and on the Home ground, a putting change for a Republican who eschewed a face overlaying because the coronavirus pandemic raged, as soon as calling federal masks mandates “Democrats’ masking political theater.”
Richard Fausset contributed reporting from Atlanta.