The Pa. House speaker election is upending Harrisburg. ‘All hell broke loose.’

Philadelphia Inquirer 1 hr ago Gillian McGoldrick, Andrew Seidman, Jonathan Lai, The Philadelphia Inquirer

No one walked onto the House floor Tuesday expecting Berks County Democrat Mark Rozzi to become the next speaker of the House. Not even Rozzi.

Tuesday’s speaker election was full of surprises — even by Harrisburg standards. First, Republicans nominated a Democrat to become the next House speaker, despite having 101 representatives to Democrats’ 99 members sworn in Tuesday. Then, their Democratic pick — Rozzi, who represents parts of Reading and its surrounding suburbs — announced he’d be the state’s first independent speaker and would not join the internal deliberations of either party.

Mark Rozzi, a Democrat-turned-independent, is now speaker of the Pa. House after a surprise vote

Now, Republican leadership swears that Rozzi will leave the Democratic Party and become not affiliated as part of his agreement with them. Democrats say Rozzi won’t caucus with them but he’s still going to remain a Democrat. Rozzi promised them as much in a closed-door meeting, according to at least four Democratic representatives who were in the meeting.

The Inquirer spoke with a dozen House lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to find out what led to this surprise vote — and the many ways it could all play out.

The run-up

Republican and Democratic leaders spent the last few weeks trying to find members on their opposing side of the aisle they could flip to their side. For Republicans, they targeted at least five Democrats, in hopes of flipping at least one, according to members with knowledge of the conversations. Democrats needed to flip at least two members to have a majority of the votes, and mostly targeted newly elected Republicans from Bucks County and a handful of moderate GOP members.

Republican Leader Bryan Cutler (R., Lancaster) said in an interview with The Inquirer on Thursday that he spent recent weeks crisscrossing the state to try to persuade members to make the party switch. He was aware of Democrats doing the same, he said.

However, it wasn’t until about 30 minutes before Rep. Jim Gregory (R., Blair) nominated Rozzi that he became the top candidate for Republicans, Cutler said.

The new Pa. House speaker was a surprise. Here’s what happened.

Democrats had been warned that if they were nominated by Republicans, they should quickly step forward and decline, one Democrat said on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

“Nobody knew that Rozzi was on the take, and when he was nominated, we all thought, ‘Oh, right, we were warned about this,’” the Democrat said. But then Rozzi didn’t reject the nomination. “When that didn’t happen, all hell broke loose.”

So, why Rozzi?

Rozzi made a deal with Republicans — most notably that he’d change his political affiliation to independent, Cutler said. Cutler and GOP staff helped write Rozzi’s first speech as speaker.

“There were a lot of people who didn’t have the courage to do what [Rozzi] did,” Cutler added.

Republicans had approached a handful of others with the same offer, according to multiple Democrats: We’ll vote you in as speaker if you switch from Democratic to independent, say so in your speech from the rostrum, and hire some key Republican staffers. The other targeted Democrats rejected the offer; they learned Rozzi had been offered it only once he was elected.

Rozzi’s speech after being elected matched the written Republican proposal that Rep. John T. Galloway (D., Bucks) received, according to two Democrats who saw the proposal. (Galloway could not be reached for comment Thursday.)

Who is Rep. Mark Rozzi, the surprise Pa. speaker of the House?

The two Democrats both independently said the proposal Galloway received contained one specific point that Rozzi hadn’t said in his speech: That he would change his party registration to independent. That could explain why Republicans believe Rozzi will switch, they said — it was an explicit part of their offer.

“He ultimately became the pick because we were looking for some time to find someone we could work with on issues that were important to us,” Cutler said. “We were very clear that in the early part of the session we were really interested in finishing the constitutional amendments. Obviously we had some natural overlap there.”

Rozzi is the state’s biggest advocate for a constitutional amendment that would widen the window for childhood sexual-abuse survivors to sue as adults their abusers or the institutions that protected them, as a survivor himself. Gregory, the Blair County Republican who nominated Rozzi, is also a survivor of sexual abuse and has worked on the issue with Rozzi.

Cutler suggested that with Rozzi as speaker — and his interest in passing constitutional amendments, the House would vote on amendments that would impose stricter voter ID requirements and make it easier for the legislature to reject regulations. Democrats have previously opposed these measures.

“[Rozzi] decided he wanted to get to work, get to the issues and solve problems,” Cutler said.

On the floor

Democrats won a majority of the House seats in the November election. But three vacancies left them in the minority when they walked onto the floor Tuesday — just as they have been for 12 years.

Prior to the Rozzi vote, Democrats hoped they could postpone voting on a speaker until after the special elections take place Feb. 7. (The date for two of these races is still being litigated.) By then, they’d have a true majority — 102 members to Republicans’ 101.

Democrats, plus one Republican, deadlocked with GOP members, 100-100. The motion failed.

How every member of the Pa. House voted for speaker

Leaders were seen on the floor trying to work out a deal. It’s during this time that GOP leaders decided they’d nominate Rozzi. Sixteen Republicans, including Cutler and several other members of Republican leadership, joined Democrats in voting for Rozzi.

Rank-and-file lawmakers were stunned.

Rep. Mark Gillen (R., Berks) had been telling a colleague how he thought the speaker election might play out when Gregory nominated Rozzi.

“I said, ‘Forget about what I just said,’” Gillen, whose district is adjacent to Rozzi’s, recalled Thursday. “So anybody who saw this coming more than a few hours before probably has a prophetic ability, because I think it took most of us by surprise.”

A majority of the caucus had voted to back Rep. Carl Walker Metzgar (R., Somerset). But “we were told as a group the votes weren’t there” to successfully elect a Republican House speaker, Gillen said.

Democrats thought they had called Republicans’ bluff. Democratic Leader Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia) announced Rozzi as a Democratic speaker. Then Rozzi dropped another surprise: he’d be the state’s first “independent speaker,” he announced in his speech. He vowed not to join the internal deliberations of either party.

Pennsylvania’s first independent speaker? Or a Democrat leading independently?

It’s unclear whether that means he’ll actually change his party affiliation to be independent, which in Pennsylvania is listed as “no affiliation,” or will act as an independent leader without the influence of a political party.

In a private meeting with Democrats after Tuesday’s vote, Rozzi told members he would remain a registered Democrat, according to multiple members in the meeting. Rozzi is listed as the “Democratic House Speaker” on his legislative website that’s controlled by House Democrats.

On the opposing side, Cutler said he still expects Rozzi to change his party registration to leave the Democratic Party, per their agreement, once he gets more settled into the speakership.

Rozzi and his staff did not respond to multiple calls and requests for comment Thursday.

So Rozzi — the only person who knows whether he’s going to change his political affiliation, and thus, set the House up to be without a majority and a 101-101-1 split — isn’t speaking publicly right now. (As of Thursday afternoon, his voter registration remained Democratic.)

Rep. Mike Sturla (D., Lancaster) said he doesn’t care much whether Rozzi changes his political party.

“There’s a majority party if a majority of members vote to put someone in the majority, regardless of what initial is behind their name,” Sturla added, noting that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has run as an independent for many years but still votes with Democrats.

“There’s a guy that’s a registered Democrat who got elected as speaker. I think that’s a huge upside to having a Republican speaker,” Sturla added. “If there had been a Republican speaker, there’d be all sorts of doomsday scenarios for what they’d do for the next few weeks or months.”

To Zelda Yoder, the secretary of the Berks County Democratic Committee and one of Rozzi’s constituents in Reading, Rozzi has always had an “independent streak.”

Yoder recalled Rozzi once telling her that he reads every bill and determines how he’ll vote, rather than just going along with what party leadership tells him to do.

“He doesn’t just march along,” she added. “It’s a perfect situation for him. He can say, ‘I can be independent and not caucus with either side,’ but I don’t think he puts his Democratic values to the side to do that.”

Some conservatives remain unconvinced that Rozzi will change his approach. “I voted for a Republican speaker. I don’t vote for people who vote with the party that is trying to destroy this Commonwealth and Nation,” Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (R., Clinton) said on Facebook.

But other Republicans who voted for Metzgar said they wanted to give Rozzi a chance.

“Certainly the flavor with which he spoke on Tuesday was ‘I want to be different from both sides, I want to be that meditator in the middle,’” said Rep. Tina Pickett (R., Bradford/Wyoming). “He can make a good name for himself if he does that.”

She said whether Rozzi will become an independent is “a little bit up in the air,” but she’s hopeful he’ll govern as one.

What’s next?

Democrats aren’t giving up hope on making McClinton the first woman — and first Black woman — speaker of the state House.

Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia) said that once special elections are held to fill vacancies in three Democratic-leaning districts, McClinton will have enough votes in the House to win the gavel. (This assumes that Rozzi does not change his political party and would support a different speaker. He would need to resign or be recalled as speaker to be replaced by McClinton.)

“I feel strongly that Joanna should be our speaker,” he said in an interview Thursday. “I feel strongly those three Democratic candidates are going to become three Democratic members of the House. I believe when we have full complement Joanna will become speaker.”

Kenyatta, asked about Rozzi’s election and his stated pledge to govern as an independent, said: “I’m not going to speak for Mark. I would not have done what he did.”

“But I think I have to look at what he’s done. And what he did, first, was hire a Democratic parliamentarian. What he has said to us and said publicly is he was elected as a Democrat and is going to remain a Democrat. And so that’s the information we have.”

Some Democrats worried, though, about how Rozzi had responded when the caucus met Tuesday night. Rozzi demurred when asked whether he would step down and support McClinton as speaker once Democrats have a full majority, multiple Democrats in the meeting said.

Cutler said he expects Rozzi to fulfill a full two-year term as speaker.

A key test will be the enactment of House rules that will determine the partisan composition of committees and who controls what legislation gets considered on the House floor.

Eventually, Rozzi will have to tell voters what he plans to do.

Gillen, the Berks County Republican, encouraged fellow lawmakers to “be patient” with Rozzi.

“Give him an opportunity to grow into this role,” Gillen said.

Rozzi knows he’ll need the support.

After Rozzi was named speaker, Gillen texted Rozzi that he was praying for him.

“Thanks Mark, need all the prayers I can get,” Rozzi responded.

“We all do,” Gillen replied. “Remember your roots.”

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.

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