Just before 2 p.m. on Wednesday, by a vote of 220 to 209, Louisiana representative Mike Johnson was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, bringing an end to the legislative paralysis and intraparty dysfunction that has plagued the GOP caucus since Kevin McCarthy was stripped of the gavel three weeks ago.

In his first address on the House floor, Johnson gave an early nod across the aisle to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who he promised to “find common ground” with, even if the two lawmakers see “things from very different points of view.” He went on to tick off a string of priorities as the new House Speaker, many of which drew applause and even the occasional standing ovation from Democrats on the floor. “Let the enemies of freedom around the world hear us loud and clear: the People’s House is back,” he said.

But in between the platitudes and dubious displays of bipartisan camaraderie, the complexities of the task ahead for Johnson were thrown into sharp relief. The new Speaker drew grumbling from some of his Democratic colleagues, and just minutes before the Louisiana lawmaker took the lectern, a rowdy Marjorie Taylor Greene could be heard shouting down Jeffries’s remark that Joe Biden won the election. There was certainly a palpable sense of relief in the House chamber after the vote, but Johnson still has to navigate the challenges of a razor-thin majority and an unruly caucus of his own.

Asked about the mood among his Republican colleagues Wednesday afternoon, Byron Donalds, whom Johnson beat out for the Speaker nomination, struck an optimistic tone—albeit with a few caveats. “Everybody’s very optimistic, but also we’re realistic,” he told Vanity Fair. “We know it’s gonna be a hard couple of weeks, because there’s been a lot of work that has not been handled, and we’re gonna get to it.” Pressed on the intraparty tensions that spilled into the public eye over the past three weeks, Donalds deflected: “I don’t want to be a Pollyanna about it.”

In the immediate aftermath of McCarthy’s historic ouster, Johnson was not among those initially propped up as a likely successor to the California lawmaker. Rather, his ascension follows a string of failed attempts by three higher-profile, more experienced Republicans to become House Speaker. But ultimately, those presumptive heirs apparent became casualties of the bitterly divided GOP caucus. House majority leader Steve Scalise was considered, by some, too swampy, a fixture of the establishment. Freedom Caucus cofounder Jim Jordan was too much of a firebrand for some moderate members. Republican whip Tom Emmer was too much of a “RINO.”

Out of the ashes of this trio’s leadership dreams rose Johnson. He is something of a Goldilocks of the GOP conference: equipped with all the right-wing bona fides but lacking the bombastic bluster. And unlike Emmer, the most recent Speaker-designee casualty, he didn’t face opposition from Donald Trump. That’s surely because Johnson was one of the architects of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit to overturn the results in four swing states. He later joined 138 other House members, in the aftermath of the January 6 attack, in trying to overturn Joe Biden’s clear and decisive victory.

“Johnson was deeply involved in efforts to keep Trump in power starting immediately after 2020 election,” Robert Costa, a CBS News correspondent and coauthor of the 2021 book Peril, posted on X. “I’ve talked with key sources from that time about how Johnson—then all but unknown—worked with allied Trump groups and conservative leaders in a coordinated way to make sure that whole orbit was working together to help Trump.”

After Johnson emerged as the Speaker designee late Tuesday night, ABC News’ Rachel Scott asked him about his efforts to overturn the election. “Next question,” Johnson said, as other Republicans burst into boos and Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina shouted, “Shut up! Shut up!”

Democrats aren’t moving on, though. California representative Pete Aguilar, in nominating the Democrats’ leader, Hakeem Jeffries, highlighted Johnson’s record of election denial. “Democrats believe that when members of this body voted to reject the results of the 2020 election, they forfeited their ability to lead this chamber,” he said. (All 209 Democrats present voted for Jeffries.)

When it comes to social issues, Johnson is hard to the right. He opposed legalizing same-sex marriage—unlike Emmer, who faced some opposition in his Speaker bid for voting in favor of such legislation. He introduced a bill last year “that prohibited the use of federal funds for providing sex education to children under 10 that included any LGBTQ topics,” which critics likened to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, according to The New York Times.

And on abortion, Johnson is a vocal opponent. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Johnson wrote on what was then known as Twitter that “Louisiana is now a proudly pro-life state—we will get the number of abortions to ZERO!! EVERYONE deserves a birthday. Thanks be to God.” And he has argued that Roe provided “constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children in America,” and seemingly blamed the need to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on losing “able-bodied workers in the economy” to abortions.

“Mike Johnson is a carbon-copy of the MAGA extremism that is deeply unpopular with Americans across the country,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement ahead of Wednesday’s Speaker vote.

Johnson’s record will undoubtedly draw intense scrutiny in the days and weeks to come. But if the fight for the gavel serves as anything, it is a portent of the challenges he will face as the leader of a caucus that, for three weeks, has demonstrated an inability to govern. On Tuesday night, after he became Speaker designee, Johnson insisted, “This House Republican majority is united.” But picking a leader is arguably the least nuanced issue a majority has to tackle. Johnson, in other words, just cleared the lowest hurdle he will be presented with now that he is Speaker.

The end of the protracted Speakership fight was roundly applauded by Republicans. “Mike has less than four enemies. So Mike is—in addition to being abundantly qualified—he just is one of those nice people that builds coalitions and doesn’t make people unnecessarily angry,” Ken Buck, who was a holdout in previous Speaker votes this month, told reporters Wednesday ahead of the vote.

And Buck, who opposed Jordan for Speaker because the Ohio lawmaker still has not recognized the validity of Biden’s 2020 win, drew a contrast with Johnson. “I’ve served on the Judiciary [Committee] with Mike Johnson…. I’ve observed Mike in all kinds of situations. I knew that he voted to decertify [the election] and he wrote the brief, but I also know that from the January 6 report and other things, he was not intimately involved in the planning or operation of January 6.” Buck voted for Johnson.

Johnson, who was elected to Congress in 2016, assumes the gavel with limited experience in leadership, as Senator Mitt Romney noted before the vote. “Apparently experience isn’t necessary for the Speaker job,” he said.

As the vice chair of the House Republican Conference, Johnson did vote in favor of the debt-ceiling deal McCarthy struck with the Biden White House—casting it as the only choice. But he voted against the continuing resolution that cost the Californian his job. Notably, Johnson also voted against continued funding for Ukraine. And he has previously pushed for steep cuts to entitlement programs, implying in an interview that the Republican Party needed to “get back to it as the number one priority.”

Speaking from the Capitol steps after the vote, Johnson claimed that the past three weeks have put the Republican caucus in a stronger position. “Perseverance produces character and character produces hope,” he said. “We’ve gone through a little bit of suffering.” However, Democrat Steny Hoyer, having wrangled his own caucus as Nancy Pelosi’s former deputy, had his doubts: “I think they’re a deeply divided conference.”