In about an hour from the writing of this post, they’ll have a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill on making Mike Johnson the Speaker of the House for a full term.

Johnson might have to endure several votes to get to 218. The current House has a scant majority of 220 Republicans to 215 Democrats. And not all of the Republicans are on board with Johnson continuing in the role he’s held since midway through the previous Congress. That’s true even despite President-elect Donald Trump jumping with both feet onto the Johnson bandwagon.

It’s an almost untenable position Johnson is in. The GOP caucus is a bare majority and it’s fractious. It’s very difficult to muster a majority for anything the GOP wants to do, partially because there is a faction of the Republican caucus which is justifiably opposed to passing must-pass legislation like reconciliation or budgetary continuing resolutions without real progress being made toward a balanced budget.

And other things.

Congressional process is broken. It’s been broken for a long time. Mike Johnson didn’t break it. I can tell you that he wants to fix it. But with a majority that small, he doesn’t have a lot of power to do that.

Especially given that the Democrats are wholly uninterested in working with him to do anything that isn’t a Democrat idea.

If Johnson had a majority of 235 rather than 220, there would be much less of a problem and it would be a lot more justifiable to be holding his feet to the fire in getting the Republican agenda done. But as Speaker, he has to seek a majority regardless of agendas. That’s the job. That’s why so many members of Congress who sound so terrific on television seemingly inexplicably don’t want the job.

So today, Johnson has to seek a majority to remain Speaker.

The bet here is he’ll find a way.

I’ve seen whip counts showing him as high as 217 within his own caucus. If that turns out to be accurate, and he has three GOP holdouts, then Johnson should be able to get to 218.

Cleo Fields, the Democrat from Baton Rouge who was gifted a congressional seat by Gov. Jeff Landry and Louisiana’s legislature following a debacle of a court case in which a partisan leftist Obama judge in the Middle District of Louisiana federal court threw out the state’s congressional map, owes Johnson a vote across the aisle.

Fields got a made-to-order congressional district commissioned in large part by Landry. That district could have been drawn in ways much less advantageous to Fields, but because he opted to sit on the sidelines and not mobilize votes for Shawn Wilson in the 2023 gubernatorial primary, which opened the road for Landry to win that primary with 52 percent of the vote, he hit the redistricting jackpot in the first special session last year.

Garret Graves was a very popular congressman in the Sixth Congressional District. Graves and Johnson were anything but allies, but Graves would have been a vote for Johnson today. Landry wanted Graves gone, and so Fields has that seat after winning comfortably in November.

He owes his Republican benefactors a vote for Johnson.

And he owes the people of Louisiana and the Sixth District that vote, too.

It’s of no use to Cleo Fields to vote for Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ leader in the House, for Speaker. Jeffries will not win. He is capped at 215 votes; no Republican will cross the aisle to vote for him.

Whoever wins the election for Speaker will be a Republican. This is obvious. If it isn’t Johnson, the chances aren’t very good that the Speaker will be from Louisiana. So if Mike Johnson hits a hard ceiling of 217 and can’t get to a majority, that will mean Cleo Fields will have cost Louisiana a Speaker of the House.

And by extension, Jeff Landry will have done so.

This really can’t be allowed to happen.

Fields is a Democrat. Nobody expects him to regularly cross the aisle and vote with the GOP. If this is the only bipartisan vote he makes in this congress, it shouldn’t be a surprise.

But he should make it today.

If Fields doesn’t, then he oughtn’t be shocked if the entire weight of Louisiana’s political body is repeatedly dropped on his head and every possible effort is made to destroy him. He might have played his cards correctly so far, but if he thinks the friends he’s made will stay friendly when he’s actually doing harm to the interests of this state, he’s sorely mistaken.

And outside of the Sixth District (and to a significant measure inside of that district as well), Cleo Fields’ name is mud given the wide understanding of his shady exploits through the years.

It’ll be an interesting vote today. Hopefully Fields won’t be needed to make a majority for Johnson. But if he is, and he won’t do it, don’t bet on an enjoyable experience for him in Congress this year.