Rep. Matt Gaetz will not be ignored.
The Republican firebrand from Florida is quickly becoming the least popular and most popular lawmaker in the House, depending on whom you ask.
Some Republicans say Mr. Gaetz is “a joke” and “a charlatan,” and they want to expel him over his efforts to push out Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which would likely throw the Republican-led House into complete disarray.
Others say Mr. Gaetz is a conservative hero fighting to force Republican leaders to uphold promises to rein in runaway government spending that has contributed to the nation’s $33 trillion debt.
Either way, he has everyone’s attention.
Mr. Gaetz took center stage in the House as soon as it gaveled in Monday by threatening to use a parliamentary procedure that would force a vote on whether to dethrone Mr. McCarthy. He accused the speaker of cutting backroom spending deals with President Biden at the expense of Republican principles. The narrow majority means only four Republicans would be needed to pass the resolution if all Democrats vote to eject Mr. McCarthy.
“It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference,” Mr. Gaetz said.
Mr. Gaetz, 41, has been threatening to push out Mr. McCarthy since January, when he led a small rebellion that forced an unprecedented 15 rounds of voting before Mr. McCarthy could secure the majority needed to take the speaker’s gavel.
Mr. Gaetz and his faction of Republican rebels won changes in the House rules, giving the rank and file more power and assurances that the leadership would fight for fiscal responsibility in spending legislation. The assurances included votes on individual spending bills rather than one piece of legislation that gets little scrutiny.
Mr. Gaetz launched his latest threat after Mr. McCarthy put a stopgap spending bill on the floor that passed with Republican and Democratic support and lacked cuts or any of the border security measures that conservatives sought to stop an influx of illegal immigrants.
Months after the January rebellion, it’s not clear how much support Mr. Gaetz has for ousting Mr. McCarthy.
It’s nowhere near a majority of House Republicans.
Most Republican lawmakers support the speaker and want Mr. Gaetz to disappear.
A few are threatening to expel Mr. Gaetz over accusations that he engaged in sex trafficking. Those allegations, which the lawmaker vigorously denies, are under investigation. The House Ethics Committee took up the matter after a Justice Department inquiry ended without charges.
Mr. Gaetz has never spent much time worrying about his contemporaries on Capitol Hill. He often brags that he is one of the few lawmakers not beholden to special interests or concerned with the trappings of Congress.
More than three years ago, he announced that he would no longer accept contributions from federal political action committees.
“The more a member of Congress proves his merit laundering money between special interests and our fake leadership, the more he moves up,” Mr. Gaetz, who describes himself as a libertarian populist, told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2020.
Mr. Gaetz’s orbit of Republican supporters shrugs off any Capitol Hill repercussions for trying to oust the speaker.
Mr. Gaetz, they said, has stood on principle and has abandoned the typical quests for plum committee assignments, chairmanships and leadership positions in the party, so he doesn’t care if he takes a shot at Mr. McCarthy and misses.
“If he fails here, OK, he fails. But he’s still a hero to a large segment of the Republican Party,” one Republican strategist said. “I don’t see what the risk is to Matt.”
A year ago, Mr. Gaetz was defending himself in an FBI sex trafficking investigation. On Monday, he had a throng of reporters trailing him around the Capitol as he wielded control over the future of the House Republican leadership.
“Matt Gaetz has balls of solid marble,” Republican political strategist and podcaster Joey Mannarino posted on X. “No fear. Never backs down. We need more like him.”
Mr. Gaetz on Monday defended his threats against Mr. McCarthy as a last-ditch attempt to rescue the country from imminent fiscal disaster.
“Forcing a few votes and filing a few motions is not chaos. If we continue to have $2 trillion annual deficits, you won’t know real chaos until you see where the swamp and this uniparty are bringing us,” he said on the Capitol steps.
Mr. Gaetz is attacking the Republican establishment as he eyes a political future beyond Congress. One Florida Republican Party insider said he is positioning himself to run for governor in 2026, when the current governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is term-limited out of office.
An unwavering ally of former President Donald Trump, Mr. Gaetz is said to be angling for Mr. Trump’s endorsement if he runs for governor. A nod from Mr. Trump could elevate Mr. Gaetz among Republican competitors in the same way his endorsement pushed Mr. DeSantis to victory in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary in 2018.
Mr. Gaetz has not publicly confirmed his plans, and insiders say he is undecided.
If he runs, it could pit him against another Trump ally, Rep. Byron Donalds, representing the state’s 19th District in southwest Florida. A source close to Mr. Donalds said he is considering a bid for governor in 2026 but is currently focused on helping get Mr. Trump reelected.
If Mr. Gaetz abandons Congress to pursue the governor’s mansion, his stay on Capitol Hill will have been relatively brief.
He was elected to the House in November 2016 to represent the 1st Congressional District in Florida’s western panhandle. His father, Don Gaetz, has been entrenched in politics for decades as a local official, former Florida Senate president and current member of the state Ethics Commission.
In Congress, Mr. Gaetz sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Judiciary Committee. He recently forced a Judiciary Committee vote on congressional term limits, which he said are “wildly popular in every ZIP code in America except in Washington, D.C.” The measure was defeated by two votes.
He is also a member of a special House committee examining the weaponization of the federal government.
The lawmaker describes his weekly podcast, “Firebrand,” as “a behind-the-scenes look into the Swamp of Washington without the spin of Fake News and Deep State influence.”
Mr. Gaetz served as a member of the Florida House of Representatives from 2010 until 2016. He graduated from Florida State University and earned his law degree from the College of William & Mary in Virginia. He worked briefly as a lawyer before running for the state Legislature.
His father, 75, announced Monday that he is formalizing a bid to return to the Florida Senate and will run for the seat he held from 2012 to 2016. Don Gaetz said the decision to run was unrelated to his son’s possible bid for governor.
His son, meanwhile, is fending off a potentially career-threatening ethics inquiry.
Lawmakers in the House, looking for a way to expel Mr. Gaetz, say they would vote to eject him if the House ethics panel finds any wrongdoing related to the sex trafficking charges.
The Justice Department in February dropped its investigation of Mr. Gaetz over a lack of evidence supporting allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl he transported across state lines. The Justice Department investigation nabbed Joel Greenberg, a former Gaetz associate, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking charges for similar conduct and is serving an 11-year prison sentence.
The House Ethics Committee opened its investigation into the sex trafficking allegations against Mr. Gaetz in June and reached out to witnesses. Mr. Gaetz said the panel has been weaponized against him because he does not march in lockstep with the rest of the Republican conference.
The Ethics Committee did not respond to an inquiry about the matter.
Mr. McCarthy told reporters that he expects to survive Mr. Gaetz’s efforts to throw him out of the speakership. Mr. Gaetz is attacking him because he refused to intervene in the Ethics probe, not because of his conservative spending principles, he said.
Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Gaetz helped scuttle a government funding bill with conservative priorities: more border security money and overall spending reductions. The bill’s defeat forced Mr. McCarthy to put forward the temporary government funding bill that passed with Democratic support, he said.
“With Matt, it’s personal,” Mr. McCarthy said.
Mr. Trump so far is staying neutral — at least publicly.
“I don’t know anything about those efforts,” Mr. Trump said when asked about Mr. Gaetz’s threat to eject Mr. McCarthy from the speaker’s chair. “But I like both of them very much.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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