The View From the Press Gallery on a ‘Surreal’ Day in the House

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Catie Edmondson, a reporter who covers Congress for The New York Times, was in the press gallery inside the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Oct. 3, when lawmakers voted to remove the Republican speaker of the house, Kevin McCarthy. In the 234-year history of the chamber, such an action had never been taken.

“It was, until the last minute, hard to believe it was really happening,” Ms. Edmondson said in a recent interview.

The House cannot fully function without a speaker. During a brief recess, two Republicans announced that they would run for the post, and on Monday Mr. McCarthy even indicated that he may seek to reclaim his seat.

Ahead of a House session on Wednesday, when lawmakers are expected to formally begin the campaign for a new speaker, Ms. Edmondson discussed reporting from the chamber at the moment of Mr. McCarthy’s ouster. This conversation has been edited.

When did you realize something extraordinary was happening?

I’ll go back to the very beginning. I covered McCarthy’s election to the leadership post in January. There were 15 rounds of voting before he eventually won the gavel. Because that hard-right faction put him through the ringer in order to get him elected in the first place, there was a sense that this moment was inevitable, that McCarthy would face a challenge like this from the hard right.

But it was still completely surreal to watch it unfold in real time. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida had been teasing the idea that he was going to introduce a resolution to oust McCarthy the week before. But it wasn’t quite clear to us how many Republicans he had on board.

The big question was always going to be, What are Democrats going to do? Republicans have such a thin margin in the House, and our understanding was that if Democrats moved to try to give him passive support by voting present, there was a better chance he would be able to weather any sort of challenge. But it became clear, talking with Democrats late Monday night and early Tuesday morning, that they had no intention of helping McCarthy.

How did you and your colleagues cover the vote in the chamber?

We had our team in the gallery counting every single vote. I was sitting next to my colleague Carl Hulse, our chief Washington correspondent, who has covered Capitol Hill for decades. He had never seen anything like this, either. I was having frenetic conversations with Carl and my editor, Julie Hirschfeld Davis. We had two sets of stories ready to go: One set if McCarthy survived the challenge, and one if he didn’t.

Capitol Hill’s decorum is well known. Lawmakers, acting in the public view, often guard their behavior. Could you see the gravity of this moment reflected in the behavior of House members?

Once that gavel came down and the presiding officer declared the speaker’s office to be empty, we saw many Republicans looking really upset. We saw a huge crowd go up to McCarthy to shake his hand, to give him a hug. It was a singular experience to watch. It’s very rare that the House votes in the fashion that it did, where lawmakers stand up, one by one, to cast their votes. I think that added to the sense of tension and drama.

What happens as the House resumes its work?

We expect a flurry of activity before there is a formal vote on the House floor to elect the speaker, which House rules require. There’s going to be a candidate forum where the candidates running for speaker make their pitch. It’s going to be a pretty frenetic few days. Most people are preparing for an extended race. Maybe they’ll be able to coalesce around someone more quickly than we expect. But I think there are a lot of people who are girding for another drawn-out election.

What does a typical workweek look like for a congressional reporter?

I’m up on the Hill at least four days of the week. We have our desk space in the press gallery, but a lot of our time is spent roaming around the hallways, trying to buttonhole lawmakers and ask how they are thinking about voting. For pivotal votes, we sit in the press gallery in the House chamber, just over the lawmakers sitting on the House floor.

Is there a skill required to do this job that you could not have anticipated?

I came to the congressional team to help with our coverage of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice. I thought it was a pretty crazy, chaotic, fast-moving atmosphere that would slow down at some point. It never really did. The ability to adapt and keep going is one skill that’s tricky to anticipate. The other is facial recognition — being able to identify lawmakers in the House and pull them aside.