GOP leadership critic drops lead sponsorship of bill after alleged retribution

A House GOP lawmaker frequently at odds with leadership is trying to find a way around what he believes is retribution for his actions.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who voted against John Boehner for Speaker in January and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for Speaker last month, claims House GOP leaders are deliberately preventing a vote on a bill he authored earlier this year as a form of payback.

{mosads}He’s now taken his name off the bill in the hope that having Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) as the lead sponsor instead will improve its chances.

The legislation would rename a courthouse in Jones’s district after Randy Doub, a federal bankruptcy judge who died earlier this year. 

Jones introduced the bill in March, but it stalled despite support from the state’s entire delegation. Butterfield introduced an identical measure on the House’s last day of session before this week’s recess.

{mosads}“You can despise the individual, but for God’s sakes, this actually is hurtful to the family,” Jones complained to The Hill in June, adding that he was considering dropping his name as lead sponsor to help it.

“I’ve been told that any bill that I have of consequence, that if my name’s on it, it’s probably not going to get moving,” Jones said at the time.

Jones spokeswoman Maria Jeffrey confirmed the same bill was introduced in Butterfield’s name because of the alleged leadership squabble.

House GOP leaders have denied intentionally holding up Jones’s bill. 

Jones said he confronted Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) about it during the California Republican’s short-lived bid for Speaker last month. And according to Jones, after he made his concerns public to The Hill, a top McCarthy staffer warned his office that he “shouldn’t have said that.”

The 11-term libertarian has been the target of punishment from leadership in the past. GOP leaders in 2012 booted him from the House Financial Services Committee, a slot coveted by many lawmakers.

With the second version now unveiled, Jones and Butterfield hope that changing the name on the bill will speed its passage.

“It was agreed, because of Mr. Butterfield’s past work in Greenville and the eastern North Carolina region as an attorney and later as a judge, that Mr. Butterfield would take the lead on the legislation,” Butterfield spokesman Saul Hernandez said. “Mr. Butterfield hopes for an expeditious markup and quick consideration by the whole House.”