NC's Bishop disputes claim that he'll resign if McCarthy elected House speaker
A North Carolina congressman says rumors of his dissatisfaction with Washington are greatly exaggerated.
U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, R-NC, on Thursday said he will continue to serve his state’s 8th Congressional District even if U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is elected Speaker of the House of Representatives.
McCarthy has been angling for the House speakership, but he hasn’t received enough votes to capture the position. Bishop is one of 20 Republican House members who have blocked McCarthy’s bid this week, leaving the chamber leaderless since Tuesday.
The Fox News cable channel published a story Thursday with a headline stating that Bishop would resign if McCarthy ultimately wins the gavel. Soon after, Bishop and his office forcefully disputed the headline.
“This story is incorrect,” Bishop said on Twitter. “I said nothing of the kind — I will serve my term with all the force and vigor in me.”
Chris Pandolfo, the Fox News reporter whose byline appears atop the article, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fox News cited Bishop’s comments to Roll Call, which quoted him as saying: "We’re going to either see improvement up here the same way we made remarkable improvements in North Carolina in the state legislature, or I’m out."
Allie McCandless, a spokeswoman for Bishop, accused the Fox News reporter of “purposefully misconstruing the full quote” in which Bishop spoke more generally about goals he wants to meet while in office.
“Congressman Bishop said that he doesn’t plan to be on the hill for life, [and] that if we eventually can’t get the necessary changes to the institution, that he would shorten his planned tenure,” McCandless tweeted.
A reporter for the McClatchy Co. newspaper chain also disputed the Fox News headline, tweeting: “I was there for this interview with [Bishop], and his team is right. He absolutely did not say what is being alleged.”
Just before noon Thursday, Fox News changed its headline to say: “GOP holdout Dan Bishop denies claiming he'll resign if bid to stop McCarthy fails.”
Shortly after, Bishop nominated U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida for speaker and admonished members of his party who didn’t vote for Donalds in previous speaker votes this week.
“Yesterday, we could have elected the first Black speaker of the United States House of Representatives,” Bishop said during a nominating speech on the House floor, referring to Donalds. He also rebuked what he described as “grotesquely racist rhetoric” that discounted Donalds as a contender for the leadership position.
Bishop also addressed the Fox News article, which he described as incorrect, and made reference to a member-elect of Congress who distributed the article. He didn’t name the member-elect.
“That member-elect quote-tweeted that incorrect story for his own political purposes after the story had been corrected and the actual statement contradicting that report had been provided,” Bishop said. “This is the old trafficking in lies from Washington that the American people know far too well. By the way, I'm not leaving.”
“I came to fix this broken system,” Bishop added. “... America needs men and women of courage to do something new in Congress so that Congress can serve the American people. … We need more Byron Donaldses.”
