The nomination of Mr. Scalise, 58, who has been the No. 2 chief within the chamber, was a vote of confidence for a deeply conservative Republican who as soon as described himself, in line with an area columnist, as “like David Duke with out the luggage.” He represents the Louisiana congressional district that elected Mr. Duke, the previous Ku Klux Klan chief, to the State Legislature in 1989. His conservative governmental philosophy, the columnist wrote, was not a lot completely different from the one Mr. Duke embraced as a politician, together with oppositions to taxes and social security internet packages.
Mr. Scalise apologized in 2014 for having attended a white supremacist gathering greater than a decade earlier, saying that he had not identified the character of the group.
On Wednesday, Consultant Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina cited that episode as a cause to not help him, saying that she would again Mr. Jordan as an alternative.
“I personally can’t, in good conscience, vote for somebody who attended a white supremacist convention and in contrast himself to David Duke,” she informed CNN.
In Congress since 2008, Mr. Scalise was recognized with blood most cancers over the summer season and is now present process intense therapy, which has prompted him to put on a masks to vote on the Home ground and to attend information conferences. And in 2017, throughout a observe for a congressional baseball recreation, an anti-Trump extremist shot and critically wounded Mr. Scalise. He nonetheless walks with a limp.
Over the previous yr, Mr. Scalise has been marginalized by Mr. McCarthy, who has privately described him to colleagues as ineffective, checked out and reluctant to take positions, and reduce him out of all main resolution making. Their icy relationship made it harder for Mr. Scalise to consolidate help within the badly fractured Republican convention.
Catie Edmondson, Robert Jimison and Carl Hulse contributed reporting.
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