Johnson survives House speaker’s vote. Now comes the hard part.

Mike Johnson managed to squeak through in his reelection to speaker of the House on Friday – but the drama and delay around the vote are an ominous sign for the Republicans’ ability to use their newly won unified control of Washington to pass significant legislation.

Three hard-line conservative House Republicans initially voted for other candidates on Friday afternoon, denying Mr. Johnson the absolute House majority he needed to return to the speakership on the first round of voting. But House Republicans held the vote open for roughly an hour until Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas came to the speaker’s well, changed their votes to support Mr. Johnson, and shook his hand.

The final result ends a bit of drama to kick off the new Congress. Speaker votes were once a pro forma exercise. House Republicans’ struggle to achieve even this basic act raises questions about how easy it will be for incoming President Donald Trump and his congressional allies to tackle their top legislative issues including border security, a crackdown on illegal immigration, and extensions of personal tax cuts that are set to expire – all issues Speaker Johnson promised to act on in his victory speech Friday afternoon.

House Republicans begin the new Congress with the slimmest majority in nearly a century: just a 219-215 margin. That’s already temporarily one seat fewer than on Election Day because of former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s resignation from Congress – and will shrink by two more seats when Reps. Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz leave Congress to join the Trump administration.

During this vote, Messrs. Norman and Self initially joined iconoclastic libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky to oppose Mr. Johnson’s reelection. Led by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, five other hard-line conservatives, who had refused to say publicly whether they’d back Mr. Johnson before the vote, declined to vote when their names were initially called. They grudgingly cast their support to Mr. Johnson when asked later in the vote after their symbolic protest.

Mr. Johnson had kept his conference mostly happy – until a few weeks ago, when he agreed to a bipartisan deal to avoid a government shutdown that infuriated House Republicans from across the ideological spectrum. The deal drew harsh criticism from Mr. Trump. But the president-elect vocally supported Mr. Johnson in this race. That likely got him across the finish line.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Thomas Massie of Kentucky calls out the name of Tom Emmer of Minnesota, instead of Mike Johnson, during voting for House Speaker, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 3, 2025.

Mr. Roy, Mr. Norman, and nine other Republican members put out a joint statement after the vote saying that they’d backed Mr. Johnson “despite our sincere reservations” about his track record “because of our steadfast support of President Trump.”

Mr. Self said that he’d spoken to Mr. Trump as he explained his vote to reporters after Speaker Johnson’s win.

“The Trump agenda is most important, and we need to shore up the processes in the House to make sure we have the strongest negotiating team for the reconciliation package that will come,” he said. “This was all about making the Trump agenda more successful.”

This vote comes just two years after House Republicans needed 15 roll call votes over four days to find the majority to elect Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, as many of the same hard-line Republicans that held out on Mr. Johnson Friday refused to vote for Mr. McCarthy until he made major concessions. One of those concessions was allowing any one GOP member to demand another vote for speaker – which those members used to force Mr. McCarthy from the speakership in October 2023. That led to weekslong chaos, with multiple Republicans failing to win a majority until Mr. Johnson, then a little-known member of the conference, emerged as a consensus choice.

GOP members expressed exasperation with their holdout colleagues before their switch.

“I am disappointed and frustrated. We are voting on the past, not on the future, and my colleagues need to know that now there’s President Trump in the White House and a majority in the Senate. ... I don’t agree with where they are, and I think they need to have a different perspective,” Rep. John McGuire of Virginia told the Monitor shortly after the vote.

“We have to govern. And this is not a good indicator of governance as a party, and it’s a dangerous game, because if they get the math wrong they can actually throw it to the Democrats,” said Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas.

It wasn’t clear until the vote itself whether Mr. Johnson would win enough votes for the speakership. He could afford to have no more than one Republican member vote against him because of the GOP’s historically slim House majority. In the end, after a lot of drama and uncertainty, that’s exactly where he landed.

Some Republicans insisted that Mr. Johnson’s ability to prevail was a good sign.

“It means we’re off to a much better trajectory than previously,” said Rep. Max Miller of Ohio.

A win is certainly better than a more prolonged loss, and showed President-elect Trump’s power to cajole unhappy members. But today’s drama may be just the first high-wire act Speaker Johnson will have to perform.