Interview: Matthew Green

Daniel and I chatted with Catholic University’s Matthew Green, who’s written on party leadership selection among a host of other congressional topics, on what will happen between the election and the start of the 120th Congress. This transcript is AI-generated and has been lightly edited by me. - CNChris Nehls: Hi, this is Chris Nehls of the American Governance Institute here with Daniel Schuman and our guest, Matt Green, a professor at Catholic University of America. We’re going to talk about some of the stuff that’ll be coming up between the election and the next Congress. It’s actually a pretty busy time for members, particularly if the majority flips to figure out who are going to be their leaders in the next Congress and get that all arranged. And Professor Green is one of the experts on that topic. So we’re going to talk about that and some other stuff about the organization in the next Congress. So thanks for coming on.Matt Green: Thanks for having me.Nehls: Sure thing. So let’s just kind of start high level when we have an election and we have an outcome for the midterms, the parties are going to get together ahead of time because they have a lot to do to organize the next Congress, and the first thing on their agenda is usually to pick their next leadership class. Let’s just talk about how that works. And just the mechanics.Green: Sure. There’s this period between the November elections and January when the next Congress officially meets. During that period, the parties – both parties in both the House and Senate have some big decisions to make. So one of them, as you said, is choosing their leaders. We’ll talk more about that in a minute. They do also have the opportunity to revise their own internal rules.So each party has its own internal rules. And that can govern things like how committee assignments are decided within the party. It can determine disciplinary action if a party member is not doing what they’re supposed to do, and so forth, that doesn’t get a whole lot of attention, but that can be pretty significant.So there’s the writing, the rules, possibly rewriting or revising the party’s rules and then choosing leaders. So each party in each chamber has a set of leaders. So in the Senate, for example, each party has a floor leader. Majority is a majority leader, minority has a minority leader. They also have their whips in the House. Similar situation with one important difference I’ll talk about in a second.And so the parties first meet internally to decide who that leader is going to be. That selection is usually pro forma because most leaders are incumbents and no one challenges them or whoever’s running, just no one else wants the job for whatever reason. And so it’s by acclamation. But occasionally these races can be contested within the party. And so there’s a lot of politicking that goes on.And then you have this vote, and we can talk more about the mechanics of the vote, if you like. And the big difference here is the House versus the Senate, because in the Senate, each party picks their leader and the majority party has a majority leader, and then you win by majority, vote in both parties in each chamber and then the Senate. That’s the majority leader. So Chuck Schumer, who’s the Senate majority leader, was chosen by Democrats. And then that’s the last vote.But in the House, you also have this speaker of the House position, which is subject to a vote by the full House on the House floor. So when each party is choosing their top leader, they’re also choosing their nominee for speaker. And then that nominee is formally nominated on the House floor on the first day that the House meets. And then you have an election again, this usually up until about ten years ago, where everyone votes with their party and whoever has more seats, that’s going to be the speaker. But as we saw with Kevin McCarthy, we learned that’s not always the case. And it can get quite complicated. But that is the one big difference in terms of leadership selection, I’d say that really stands out is that the House chooses its speaker. So you have this vote on the full House for the top leader, whereas the Senate, you don’t have that election take place.Nehls: Great, great. Daniel. Go ahead.Daniel Schuman: I was going to say that sometimes, as we saw, it’s a point of leverage, but we also saw it’s not just about picking who gets to be speaker, right? It’s also about what the speaker can do. And sometimes whether they can continue on. We saw with Speaker Pelosi when she was getting ready to run for her 97th term as speaker. Sorry, her, I think her third term as speaker. The sorry humor doesn’t always translate well.Nehls: They’re laughing at home. Don’t worry.Schuman: Yeah. I hope s