NC’s Jones, Meadows were part of Boehner revolt

Two North Carolinians in Congress – Reps. Walter Jones of Farmville and Mark Meadows of Cashiers – were among 25 House members who voted against Rep. John Boehner as speaker.

Boehner survived the vote on Tuesday. But 25 votes against the leader of the majority party in the House is a lot, historically anyway. The Washington Post blog “The Fix” called it “the biggest defection from an incumbent speaker in at least 100 years.”

Rep. Renee Ellmers, a Republican from Dunn, who was among the 216 who voted for Boehner, called those who opposed Boehner “bad actors” in an interview this week on NewsMax TV’s “Midpoint.” But she didn’t name any names.

Jones has a history of opposing his party’s leadership. He was against the Iraq war and opposed GOP spending bills that included aid for Afghanistan or cut funding for veterans.

Meadows, along with Rep. Richard Hudson of the 8th Congressional District, rallied Republican conservatives in 2013 in to put pressure on Boehner to tie defunding the Affordable Care Act to funding the government. House leadership was reluctant to use a shutdown as the strategy. But in the end the House voted for it, and much of the federal government was shut for over two weeks in 2013.

“After hearing from the fine people of NC with the desire to change the status quo, I cast my vote for a new direction in leadership,” Meadows said in a tweet.

Jones, with an illustration from a “Peanuts” cartoon, tweeted: “Lucy’s pulled the football too many times. Today I will vote for a new Speaker.”