Yesterday, Louisiana’s first House Speaker in modern times threw in the towel after the Republicans took a shellacking in the midterms. Mike Johnson is giving up his leadership position, which will be fought over between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan.

Things will be changing in Washington DC as Democrats take control of the House and Senate. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has told staffers he is not planning on remaining House Republican leader.

LSU-Shreveport Political Science Professor Jeff Sadow says this is no surprise. He says most Speakers do not try to take the step down to minority leader, but the decider for Johnson was just how big of a swing the House took toward the Democrats.

“It’s a different environment that he’d operate in as a party leader; and he may think somebody else would be better navigating such a large gap now.”

Sadow also says “the fact that he lasted three years, when some people didn’t know if he would last more than three months; I think that’s a credit to his service.”

Sadow expects Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana to try to become minority leader. But Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan from Ohio has also expressed interest.

What Does Mike Johnson Say About His Run As Speaker

Johnson tells KEEL News he’s proud of his accomplishments as Speaker. “I never hoped or pined for this. I tried to be a steady hand at the wheel.” Johnson says he’s the first House Speaker from Louisiana and he’s proud of that.

Johnson did acknowledge that gas prices are way too high. But he says the problem is the Strait of Hormuz. He also wanted to remind folks:

We inherited the biggest mess in history from the Biden administration. We got 40 year inflation that peaked at 9.1% and $5 dollar gasoline. But the difference is they did it intentionally. They want to ban fossil fuels. They want end oil and gas exploration. But in 2024 won the Presidency and the House and Senate and we reversed all that. But you can’t reverse the disaster overnight.

Johnson also added “we had this incredible run for the people. We gave the largest tax cut in U.S. history. It was 4.6 trillion dollars to working families.”

It wasn’t an incredible run, though I’m not going to fault Mike for saying so.

Because his demise as the Speaker of the House isn’t his fault.

Johnson raised more than $800 million for this midterm cycle and he did just under 500 events trying to help Republicans running for the House this year.

The problem is that after the Big Beautiful Bill passed early last year, nothing else moved on Capitol Hill.

And that wasn’t Mike Johnson’s fault. Because Mike Johnson doesn’t control the U.S. Senate.

The House has passed literally hundreds of bills and sent them to the Senate in this Congress, almost none of which went anywhere. There are some 50 bills sitting on the table right now that Mike Johnson managed to get through a paper-thin House majority, one which disappears on January 3, which the Senate has taken zero action on at all. The rest, Senate Majority leader John Thune let the Democrats destroy, many through the filibuster.

Which will be blown up in the first week of January. That you can bank on.

The ass-kicking the GOP took in Tuesday’s elections in both houses was richly deserved, but not by Johnson. I’m not sure what else we could have asked of him. He had nothing to work with and he still managed a functioning House of Representatives for the last two years only to watch that work squandered by a GOP majority in the Senate twice as big as his.

John Thune hasn’t resigned as the Senate’s Majority Leader, so far as we’ve seen. If anybody should be stepping down from leadership after the thorough repudiation the voters gave to the Republican Party on Tuesday, it ought to be Thune. Thune is the disgrace. Not Johnson.

We’re going to doubt that Mike Johnson will sit on his hands as a back-bench member of Congress for very long. You would expect his next move would be something in statewide Louisiana politics, and there is a statewide cycle coming up next year. John Kennedy’s Senate seat is also coming up in 2028, and if Kennedy decides not to run for re-election Johnson would probably be the strongest candidate for that seat.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Mike Johnson won a Senate seat in 2028 and immediately ran against Thune for the role of caucus leader? Yes, that’s a bit unlikely. But it’s worth a thought anyway.