Republican rep concerned seat at risk amid GOP dysfunction

Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) said her seat could be at risk amid chaos in the Republican Party over who should become the next Speaker of the House.

CNN correspondent Manu Raju asked Kiggans, a rare Republican representing a district that voted for President Biden in 2020, whether she was concerned the GOP “dysfunction” put her seat in jeopardy.

“I am,” she said. “There’s, again, work to be done here.”

“Israel’s at war,” Kiggans added. “I’m concerned about the military; I’m concerned about people from my district who we’ve sent in harm’s way.”

While House Republicans elected Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) as their nominee for the Speakership Wednesday in 113-99 vote, he doesn’t have an easy path to holding the gavel, with the list of Republicans opposed to his Speaker bid growing over the past two days.

House Republicans left a closed-door meeting Thursday afternoon saying there are no plans for a floor vote, but that Scalise will meet with the lawmakers withholding their support.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said Thursday he doesn’t think the House will have a new Speaker in place this week, echoing Kiggans’s comments about “work to be done.”

“It’s very emotional. I think there was, there’s complaints about the process yesterday, ‘We shouldn’t have adjourned. We should have argued in there,’” Crenshaw said.

“It’s like, we’re arguing now, I mean, get over it,” he added. “Your constituents don’t care about whether we left the room or not, right? They care about the border and issues that matter.” 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) also expressed her concern about how the current infighting makes the House GOP look.

“It’s not a good look for the Republican Conference unwilling to go to the floor for a vote,” Greene said after the House GOP meeting.