11.2: Congressional Leadership

The American two-party system extends to Congress, which is almost entirely elected by the plurality-rule process that mostly prevents minor-party candidates from winning. Of the 535 seats in the 118^th Congress (which took office in January of 2023), only three are occupied by independents: Senator Angus King of Maine, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona (who was elected as a Democrat but left the party in 2022). All of the remaining members are either Democrats or Republicans.

The duopoly of the Democratic and Republican parties in American politics influences the leadership structure of Congress. The highest-ranking member of the House of Representatives is the Speaker of the House, elected by a vote of all members. The Speaker presides over the House while it is in session and is responsible for organizing its business. Technically, the Speaker can be anyone — even someone not in Congress — but the House has always elected one of its own members from the party which holds a majority of seats in the House at the time.

Electing the Speaker of the House is usually an uneventful affair. The majority party generally rallies around its highest-ranking current member as its candidate for Speaker, and the majority party members who cast protest votes for someone else tend to be too few to prevent the that candidate from winning.

The 2023 Speaker election was not so uneventful. With only a narrow majority in the House, the Republicans needed just about every vote they could get to cobble together a winning coalition for their leader, Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy ultimately won the speakership, but only after 15 rounds of voting and much negotiating with the handful of conservative Republicans blocking his ascent.

In addition to being the leader of the House, the Speaker is also the leader of his or her party within the House. On the other side of the aisle, the minority party is led by the House Minority Leader. There is also a House Majority Leader from the majority party who, ironically, does not lead his or her party in the House, instead serving as the party’s second in command in the chamber behind the Speaker. The Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are similarly led by a Senate Majority Leader and a Senate Minority Leader (in some order, depending on which party has a majority in the Senate), but the Senate does not elect a speaker.

California Republican Kevin McCarthy breathes a sigh of relief upon being elected Speaker of the House in 2023 after 15 votes, the most required to elect a speaker in over a century.

In the party-congressional pecking order, the member immediately below each of the four leaders is his or her party’s chief whip within the chamber. A whip’s job is to “whip” votes — to persuade members of his or her party to vote in unison. Whips become especially important when their chambers are closely divided on key votes. For example, if the Senate is about to vote on a major and controversial bill, and if the final vote is expected to be close, the Senate Majority Whip (with his or her deputy whips) will check in with majority party members to ensure they all plan to vote one way, whereas the Senate Minority Whip will deploy his or her deputy whips to convince minority party members to vote the opposite way.

Except for the Speaker of the House, none of these congressional leadership positions are specified in the Constitution. They, like the parties they serve, evolved naturally due to the rules of the institution. The major parties created these positions and maintain them today because they serve valuable organizational functions for the parties within Congress.