The Turbulent Rise Of The Biggest Threat To Johnson’s Speakership

On Tuesday evening, as Speaker Mike Johnson faced mounting GOP opposition to his budget resolution that would set in motion President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy agenda, Indiana Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz huddled at the back of the chamber with other GOP holdouts.

At one point, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler and Rep. Tom Emmer backed Spartz and her fellow rebel Rep. Thomas Massie against a wall.

Earlier that morning, Spartz had told reporters there was nothing anyone could do to prevent her, a longtime fiscal hawk, from opposing the multitrillion-dollar budget, including even a call from Trump himself. “I don’t change my mind,” she said.

But within minutes of that moment at the back of the chamber — and sometime after a special cloakroom call from Trump — Spartz indeed flipped. On the call, Trump reportedly yelled at her loudly enough for others in the room to overhear, calling her a “fake Republican” who was derailing his agenda and reminding her he was the president. (In a post on X, Spartz disputed that account, specifically that Trump raised his voice.)

This isn’t the first time the third-term lawmaker has held Johnson hostage. And it wasn’t hard to see coming. Last November, after it was clear Republicans would have a trifecta, she confided to some of her staffers in meetings that she planned to oppose the speaker whenever possible and was planning on “taking down Johnson.” In late December and early January, she held out support for his speakership reelection until the last minute, when she extracted a number of commitments from him to work on cutting waste and spending.

Even though Spartz decided at the last minute to support his speakership earlier this year and dropped her opposition to the recent budget deal, Johnson should not be assured of Spartz’s loyalty if he doesn’t deliver what she wants.

Spartz, who has increasingly garnered headlines about her high staff turnover, hardline stances on spending and personal connection to Ukraine, is known in Congress and at home in Indiana for her unpredictability and her disregard for standard operating procedure. She has a trail of burned bridges to show for it, stretching from Noblesville, her hometown in Indiana, to her office in Washington, where more than a dozen people have left since November, on top of the already frequent pace of resignations that helped label her Washington’s worst boss in 2022, according to the nonprofit LegiStorm.

In interviews, more than a half-dozen current and former aides — some who spoke with me before leaving their employment in recent weeks — and GOP officials described Spartz to me as a mercurial, combative individual who is determined in pursuing what she wants — often at the expense of relationships. Many of them were granted anonymity because they feared retaliation from Spartz or were fearful that speaking with media could harm their job prospects.

Former staffers have reported her verbal abuse, which included her calling them “effing retards,” to the House Ethics Committee.

One former and one current staffer told me they also reported to the committee that Spartz has asked them to perform campaign-related tasks. (The Ethics Committee declined to comment, but the staffers said they were told that the committee did not pursue an investigation.) There are a number of congressional rules that prohibit staffers from doing campaign work for their bosses except under specific conditions, and one rule expressly prohibits members from “compelling” staffers to do such work. Several aides told me Spartz requested their help on campaign-related tasks, including pulling weeds and handing out champagne for a political fundraiser.

“I do not require my official staff to do any political activities at all and I am tired of you writing lies,” Spartz told me when presented with the reporting in this article. “I evaluate people and reward based on their performance of their official duties for my constituents.”

It's not just her reputation as a manager that has rattled colleagues and staffers. Last year, in a separate matter weighed by the Ethics Committee, Spartz was charged with packing a .380 caliber handgunin her carry-on bag at Dulles International Airport on her way to a gathering in Europe of the Helsinki Commission (an agency that monitors compliance with U.S.-Canada-Europe security agreements), of which she is a member. The investigation and charges were later dropped. Observers and acquaintances have also been confounded by her unofficial trips to Ukraine and record of changing stances on the conflict there.

Her speaker-election maneuvering earlier this year, and her record of staff complaints and frustrated colleagues in Washington, have come as no surprise to the Republicans on her enemies list back home in Indiana. Now, these Republicans see her as a cause of the dysfunction she frequently calls out in Washington.

“You can keep calling the circus a circus, but … at some point in time, by taking the steps that you're taking, you’re becoming the ringleader of the circus,” said Noblesville Mayor Chris Jensen, a Republican who endorsed one of Spartz’s eight challengers in last year’s May primary.

But associates think Spartz might be embracing her role as a chaos agent.

“If you want to get a good committee assignment, or you want XYZ, you play the game,” said one close Republican ally familiar with her thinking. “Then again, if you aren’t looking for a career in D.C. and the Republican speaker can only afford to lose one vote, maybe throw the rule book out the window.”

I asked Jensen, the mayor who has long tangled with her, if he had any advice for Johnson in the coming days of the new Congress.

“Whatever she tells you she is going to do,” he said, “assume she will do the exact opposite.”

Victoria Spartz was born in Nosivka, Ukraine, and later moved to Chernihiv, about 166 miles away from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. When she was eight years old, her father, an engineer, responded to the nuclear disaster there. Exposed to the radiation, he died of cancer four years later. At the time, one of her father’s best friends told Spartz she “had to become an adult,” she told me in a recent interview.

She emigrated to the United States in 2000 when she was 22. In addition to working as a bank teller and certified public accountant, she also became heavily involved in volunteer work with the local Republican Party. Her own background in a Soviet country made her a sharp critic of spending and left-leaning policies in the United States, and she cut a figure as an ideologue from her earliest days in politics.

In 2011, at 33, she became a founding member of the Hamilton County Tea Party and landed an appointment to the state senate to replace a retiring lawmaker in 2017. Almost immediately, her inflexibility on her fiscally conservative principles and unwillingness to go along with the team rubbed local Republicans the wrong way.

In one example, she opposed a bill that would allow Noblesville, her city, to embark on a $125-million street project aimed at making its downtown shopping district more walkable. The plan had been in the works for 40 years. Spartz was the only state senator to speak against it, criticizing its cost. The bill still passed, but it made her enemies. “She really opposed allowing ourselves to build our own road,” Jensen told me.

Frustrated Republican mayors and city council members in her district, including Jensen, recruited a challenger to her, Scott Baldwin, in 2020.

In Baldwin’s press release announcing his campaign, two of those mayors and a slate of city council members announced they would back Baldwin. A while later, a copy of the press release showed up on Spartz’s office door, with the names of her new political enemies highlighted. Scrawled in the margins was the kind of combative message that has become her style: Welcome: Unless your name is on this list, you may enter. (Spartz denied to me posting the press release, telling me it could have been her husband. Her husband did not respond to a request for comment.)

She evaded the challenge by running for and winning a House seat vacated by former Republican Rep. Susan Brooks in 2020.

Quickly, she developed a reputation as a bad manager. In May of 2022, she landed at the top of the LegiStorm Worst Bosses list.

Current and former staffers have a variety of complaints to back up the label and anecdotes that support the impression that Spartz overlooks rules and norms in pursuit of what she wants. In an interview, one former aide said Spartz requested that she and another staffer pull weeds and pass out champagne at Spartz’s Noblesville cabin ahead of a September 2024 fundraiser.

“When people walked to the tent, we were expressly instructed to greet them and get them a drink,” said the former aide who said she was tasked with handing out champagne. She added that Spartz scolded aides to “keep up with refilling glasses.”

The former aide also provided screenshots of text messages from Spartz in which the congresswoman requested the aide purchase specific types of beer a few days before the fundraiser.

This person added that staff is often “afraid to say no. When she asks, you do what you’re told.”

That same former aide provided screenshots of contemporaneous text messages in which she explained to another staffer where the wheelbarrow used for pulling weeds could be found.

"I have been told there was no champagne at the event. There was sparkling wine,” Dan Hazelwood, a campaign adviser, told me. “So don’t call it champagne. … I have been told by other staff they were not told to pass beverages."

At least three people also had their salaries cut after the 2024 election, according to two people. One sent a pay stub that corroborated that claim.

The former aide who says she passed out the champagne was demoted the day after the election, when Spartz gave a speech about how some staffers’ work was not good enough for the tasks ahead of them.

When asked about the address to staffers, Hazelwood said that all demoted staffers were interim and aware that a review would be coming. (After articles about staff turnover and complaints, all new staffers in Spartz’s office are required to work on an interim basis at first.)

“Staff got moved around the way she felt that they were better at serving her constituents and serving the needs of the office,” Hazelwood said. Asked how many staffers received salary deductions and demotions post-election, Hazelwood did not respond.

After the election, Spartz made targeting Johnson part of her mission. One current and one former staffer recall that in one-on-one meetings in November, Spartz told them she was “taking down Johnson” by going against him whenever possible. The two people attribute this effort to her frustration that she did not get a spot on the House Ways and Means Committee, though Spartz downplayed that when I asked her about it. “I really did not pursue that committee as other members did or play Washington games for committee assignments,” she told me. “I just need to fix health care, which was the main reason I ran for Congress.”

But a Spartz aide provided me a copy of a flier Spartz circulated pitching herself as an “EXPERIENCED FINANCE EXECUTIVE FOR WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE.” In it, Spartz said she could “bring very unique expertise to the committee to reform our tax code for the 21st Century economy to spur the growth of our nation and prosperity for all Americans.”

When asked whether Spartz has targeted Johnson, Hazelwood wrote, “She has been consistent in her private and public comments. She expects Leadership, including Speaker Johnson, to support the Trump agenda and work to reduce the deficit. Anyone who betrays that she would oppose. As you can see from her public comments and actions she has supported Speaker Johnson and the Trump Agenda.”

On March 1, 2022, wearing a yellow dress and a blue jacket, the colors of Ukraine, Spartz escorted President Joe Biden into the House chamber for his State of the Union address. Coming just days after Russia invaded her native Ukraine, the magnanimous moment elevated her national profile and seemed to foreshadow a stateswoman-like role. But Spartz’s positions on the conflict have changed, often baffling colleagues and observers.

Initially, she supported U.S. involvement in Ukraine, calling the Russian invasion a “genocide” while fighting back tears at a news conference. She supported $40 billion in aid to the country in May of 2022.

In May of 2023, Spartz was part of a Helsinki Commission congressional delegation during which she took a photo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

But soon afterward, Spartz’s positions started to shift as she fell in line more with the MAGA wing of the party, which has been skeptical of U.S. involvement in Ukraine. In a letter dated July 8, she asked Biden to brief Congress on rumors that Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak was corrupt. (The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning Spartz for circulating the “baseless” years-old rumors about Yermak.) That same month, House Republicans expressed fears that she was damaging U.S.-Ukrainian relations by criticizing and discrediting Zelenskyy.

Spartz has taken a number of trips to Ukraine during the war, some of them on official Congressional Member Delegations, called CODELs, and some of them unofficial. One former top staffer said that every now and then Spartz would be out of contact for “safety reasons,” available to her staff only for emergencies. This person would only learn later that Spartz had traveled to Ukraine.

Staffers became concerned because they did not know what she was doing or whom she was meeting in Ukraine. Some specifically worried about some of the far-right contacts she appeared to be making abroad. A photo that surfaced on social mediain late 2023 purportedly depicted Spartz posing in a Ukrainian field with someone the pro-Russia poster called a "Ukrainian Nazi, war criminal and Azov commander.” (The Azov Brigade is a special brigade of Ukrainian forces alleged to have far-right origins that the U.S. banned fromusing American weaponry until last June.) Asked about the post and image, Hazelwood said, “Politico’s request for a comment about some random year-old Twitter (X) account that promotes Kremlin propaganda is about as pointless as asking for a comment on gum stuck to a shoe.” He also said that Spartz’s last trip to Ukraine was in the summer of 2023.

A former congressional aide with knowledge of Helsinki Commission activities was not able to identify the person in the photo with Spartz but described Spartz’s unofficial trips to Ukraine as “haphazard and of unclear policy value, and often poorly or not coordinated with Congress or [the State Department].”

“It's a crazy war and so many people vie for congresspeople's attentions, so the risk of a weirdo or bad guy slipping through is always a risk, but it also is why one needs to be judicious,” said this person, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive foreign policy issues. “And she often was not.”

When asked about this assertion, Hazelwood responded, “Congresswoman Spartz wanted an immediate and unfiltered understanding of what was happening. There were lots of confusing stories especially in the first year of the war. Official Congressional trips have protocol and are tightly managed.”

Last April, Spartz voted against $61 billion in aid for her home country. Her pivot on aid came as she faced a primary in which one of her opponents was telling voters that Spartz, whose 95-year-old grandmother died months after her house was bombed in the war, put “Ukraine first.” Spartz said the U.S. shouldn’t give Ukraine a “blank check” and said U.S. border security should be more of a focus.

By February, as Trump stepped up efforts to broker an end to the conflict, Spartz’s anti-Zelenskyy rhetoric had sharpened.

“Zelensky took control of all Ukrainian media, prosecutes churches, businesses and volunteers, covered up corruption for his friends, uses ‘puppet’ prosecutors to unlawfully imprison and intimidate anyone who tells the truth about his failures to defend his country or could be a potential political opponent,” sheposted to X.

Spartz wasn’t supposed to be here. Not long after winning her 2020 race, Spartz began expressing her frustration with the job. After weighing a possible Senate bid to replace Republican Mike Braun, who was running for Indiana governor, she announced on Feb. 3, 2023, she would not be a candidate for any office in 2024. In her announcement, she cited having “two high school girls back home.” That announcement came as a surprise even to her staff, who knew she had closed on an expensive condo in D.C. the day before. “I thought that that was the strangest thing, and her announcing her retirement was literally overnight,” the former staffer who recalled concerns about Spartz’s trips to Ukraine told me. “I mean, nobody knew that that was happening.” She changed her mind a year later, telling me on Feb. 5, 2024 she would run for reelection.

The crowded primary got heated. In one high-profile ad, Chuck Goodrich, her chief opponent, cited POLITICO reporting saying Spartz “yells and curses” at staffers. “Victoria Spartz’ behavior is embarrassing,” thead said. “We don't need politicians who lie and disrespect employees and lack the temperament for public service.” Soon afterward, Spartz released an ad depicting Goodrich in a tutu. Goodrich, she added, “was just another liberal playing dress up.”

When I asked Spartz herself about Jensen’s criticism, she said he was one of many “good old boys in her district,” and that “as one of the best former Big 4 auditors in the country, I’ve successfully stopped a lot of self-dealing and paybacks they’ve been involved in.” It is unclear what she was referring to. (Jensen declined to comment on her allegation.) “They are lucky that I have bigger fish to fry right now, as it’s been getting worse and worse locally while I am busy in D.C. Unfortunately, we elected too many arrogant, unethical and incompetent people whose personal and political ambitions outweigh their duties to the public.”

Johnson might well be one of those “bigger fish” Spartz wants to fry.

Before she voted for him in January, Spartz called Johnson a “good-hearted and very intelligent person who truly wants to do good for the country” but she also expressed serious reservations. “I am just not sure if he has the strength needed to deliver on some tough issues and drain the swamp as promised to the American people,” she said. Afterward, she wouldn’t respond to my questions about Johnson’s future as speaker.

But a close ally of hers, the one who told me she’s prepared to throw away the rule book, said, “I think she will expect him to follow through on the things he just said he would do publicly, or will make his life difficult.”