House Republicans started to select their committee chairs this week. And as the top spots start to fill out, there’s one group glaringly absent from their roster: GOP women.
On Monday, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) lost her bid for the House Foreign Affairs Committee gavel to Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), which guarantees that no Republican women lawmakers will serve as elected committee leaders next year.
Wagner, vice chair of the Foreign Affairs panel and a former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, was the only woman running to chair a committee in the House. The two Republican women who currently hold committee gavels are set to vacate their posts after this Congress. House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) is retiring, while House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) is term-limited and will give up her gavel.
Foxx, however, is seen as the front-runner to lead the House Rules Committee. But that’s a post appointed solely by Speaker Mike Johnson, not an elected position. Johnson is expected to wait until the new year to make those selections, according to a source familiar with his thinking.
At the start of the 118th Congress, retiring Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) was chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, but the 81-year-old stepped down from her top spot after Congress passed a government funding package in March. House GOP leaders tapped Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) to take Granger’s place.
There are 34 Republican women members in this House during this Congress, compared to 93 Democrats.
House Democrats have five women who hold the top slot on committees: Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.) on Appropriations; Rep. Susan Wild (Pa.) on Ethics; Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) on Financial Services; Rep. Zoe Loefgren (Calif.) on Science, Space and Technology; and Rep. Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.) on the Small Business Committee.
Senate Democrats currently have five women serving as committee chairs, while Senate Republicans could have four women wielding gavels when they take over in January.
House Republicans have long struggled to elect and elevate GOP women, though they’ve made progress in recent years. Inside the House GOP leadership, a Republican woman has never served higher than the role of conference chair, the No. 4 post when Republicans hold the majority.
That job will be held by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) next year after House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Anti-“DEI” rhetoric, or diversity, equity and inclusion, has increasingly become a rallying cry in the GOP. Last month, when asked whether Johnson may push for Wagner because of the lack of female committee chairs in the GOP, one key House Republican told us: “Our speaker would not do DEI. He would get rid of it.”
And House Republicans aren’t faring much better when it comes to promoting members of color to top spots. The top three Republican leaders will all be white men again next year, while Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) is the only Black Republican running for a committee gavel.
Owens will face off against Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) on Thursday to chair the Education and Workforce Committee. If Owens wins, he’d be the first Black Republican to chair a House panel, as far as we can determine.
