January 09, 2025 11:12 AM UTC

Gabe Evans Highlights Vulnerability with Vote for Mike Johnson

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• by: Colorado Pols

Freshman Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Adams County) was officially sworn-in to Congress last week and cast his first official vote as the representative from Colorado’s eighth congressional district. That vote — a key ‘YES’ in support of House Speaker Mike Johnson — demonstrates the difficulty the man we call “Gabe-ish” will have in winning re-election in 2026.

As the publication Roll Call noted this week, Evans is already a top Democratic target for 2026:

Beyond California, New York and Blue Dog territory, members who eked out victories in close races are likely to wind up as top targets in 2026.

They include Republicans such as Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who won a third term by less than a percentage point, or about 788 votes. That’s still a more comfortable margin than her six-vote edge in 2020. Colorado freshman Gabe Evans had the second-narrowest victory among House Republicans, flipping a seat north of Denver by just under 2,500 votes. [Pols emphasis]

Evans is most certainly not representing a safe Republican district, but he’ll need to figure out a way to be more than just a rubber stamp for Republican wishes if he’s going to have any hope of winning a second term. That could be tough with Republicans cheering on his early checkmark in a narrow victory for Johnson last Friday. Evans owes his 2024 victory in part to support from Johnson; repaying that favor is going to get progressively more difficult.

As ABC News explains:

Three of the chamber’s most right-wing members — Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas — initially voted against Johnson, and seven others temporarily withheld their votes using a weird procedural trick while Johnson bartered for votes on and off the House floor. But those seven all voted for Johnson in the end, and Norman and Self changed their votes to Johnson at the last minute too, after receiving calls from President-elect Donald Trump mid-golf-game.

Unfortunately for Johnson, his slim victory could be a sign of things to come in his second term as speaker. His party holds a historically slim majority in the House, controlling just 219 votes out of 434 (Republican Matt Gaetz resigned from his seat after Trump unsuccessfully nominated him for attorney general). Any defection over the most trivial procedural or legislative matters could block the party’s agenda.

But Johnson is also in trouble because many of the key votes ostensibly for him look more like votes for the Republican agenda in spite of him. After the vote, leaders of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about three dozen right-wing, anti-establishment legislators, published a list of demands for Johnson and indicated they only voted for him to make sure they could approve Trump’s agenda in a timely manner. And since only nine Republicans are needed to introduce a motion to vacate the speakership, the Freedom Caucus implicitly holds the fate of Johnson’s job in its hands.

In fact, the vote for Johnson looks eerily similar to the one in favor of former Rep. Kevin McCarthy to be speaker in 2023, taken just months before he was kicked out of that office (events that led to Johnson originally winning the gavel). [Pols emphasis]

Evans’s support for Johnson is already being celebrated by local right-wing voices. Earlier this week, Evans was a guest of Ryan Schuiling on the latter’s KHOW radio show; the vote for House Speaker was a main topic of discussion:

SCHUILING: But you are an important vote there, especially with recent developments in the numbers game in the House as to how many votes Speaker Johnson needed to retain his role and title. Can you take us through as you saw it play out, the inner workings of that vote. You obviously voted for Speaker Johnson. He was very instrumental and helpful, I know, in your campaign personally, but just how that all went down. [Pols emphasis]

EVANS: Yeah, absolutely so. Right now, the margins in the House are 219 Republicans to 215 Democrats. Matt Gaetz…has effectively resigned, so he did not have a vote in the 119th Congress. Two of Trump’s appointments to other positions in his administration have not left the House officially yet.

So we had 219 Republicans able to cast a vote to 215 Democrats, and so very narrow margins there. Obviously, we knew there was the potential for a couple of folks to have some concerns about Speaker Johnson’s leadership, and so just as part of some of those conversations, you know, we knew that we had to drive home the message that, look, Joe Biden is going to do everything that he can in the last couple of weeks in office to muddy the waters for the clear mandate that Americans have given Republicans [and] President Trump…[Pols emphasis]

…And so being able to get a Speaker as quickly as possible so that we can get down to work to accomplish this mandate about border security, about energy dominance, about cost of living, about cutting red tape…

What eventually happened, as I think most of us know, is that the first vote was called. There were a couple of folks that initially did not vote for Speaker Johnson. However, the vote was kept open, so it wasn’t officially gaveled out that vote was not closed, And then some additional conversations happened, at which point two folks that had initially voted in favor of somebody other than Speaker Johnson changed their vote to Speaker Johnson. With those votes changed, we had the numbers for Speaker Johnson to become the Speaker of the House for the 119th Congress. It took about 90 for that to happen, but we were able to get a Speaker on the first round of voting.

Schuiling then proceeded to damn Gabe-ish Evans with conservative praise:

SCHUILING: And Mike Johnson needed every one of those votes, including from Representative Gabe Evans, who’s joining us now. Those two holdouts that he mentioned, well, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Keith Self of Texas. Thomas Massie, who I like and have a lot of respect for…he was a hard ‘no’ the whole way. He was not going to budge. I’m not sure of the genesis of that vitriol for him toward the Speaker, or [if] he thought maybe would be better with another nominee, maybe himself, I don’t know…

…And for those of you who reside in the Eighth Congressional District who listen to this program, who helped give Evans the win, think about this: Had he not won, then the Thomas Massie vote alone would have derailed the Speakership for Mike Johnson. And we might still be going through that chaos…It’s just a miracle that Gabe Evans got into office there, was able to cast that vote, was able to represent the Eighth Congressional District. [Pols emphasis]

If not for Gabe Evans, Mike Johnson would not be House Speaker today!

Yay?

Right-wing talking heads may love this allegiance to Mike Johnson, but there are a considerable number of voters in CO-08 who are going to find this argument less than persuasive in 2026. And if Johnson’s speakership is as tenuous as ABC News (and others) suggest, Gabe-ish is going to be living up to his nickname sooner rather than later.