Marjorie Taylor Greene may get her wish by having Mike Johnson step down as Speaker of the House in the near future. Speaker Hakeem Jeffries has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Democratic state Sen. Tim Kennedy won a special election in New York's 26th Buffalo-based district to serve the rest of Brian Higgins' term. Kennedy defeated Republican town supervisor Gary Dickson, thus narrowing the House GOP's majority. This gives Democrats 213 seats in the House, compared to 217 for the Republicans. Johnson will only be able to spare one Republican on a party-line vote, according to NBC News.
Five seats remain vacant.
Kennedy will serve the rest of Democratic Rep. Brian Higgins' term. Higgins, who was in his 10th term, resigned in February to run a local performing arts center, and he had some choice words for partisan gridlock in the House. Higgins told The Buffalo News late last year that Congress is “in a very, very bad place” and that “we’re at the beginning phases of a deterioration of the prestige of the institution.”
That did not deter Kennedy from running in the special election or for a full term in November.
“The dysfunction has become an embarrassment across this country and across the global community,” Kennedy said in a phone interview Monday. “And we have to restore honor and civility and functionality back into the halls of the House of Representatives.”
