New Congress live updates: What's next after Kevin McCarthy's speakership win

After Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio took to the floor to encourage Republicans to back Rep. Kevin McCarthy for speaker, Rep. Matt Gaetz got up to nominate Jordan for the position.

"I rise to nominate the most talented, hardest working member of the Republican conference, who just gave a speech with more vision than we have ever heard from the alternative," the Florida congressman said.

"Jim Jordan is humble. Perhaps today, humble to a fault," Gaetz continued. "Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House isn't someone who wants it so bad. Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House isn't someone who has sold shares of themselves for more than a decade to get it."

In the first round of voting, Jordan received six votes.

After receiving six votes of his own on the first ballot, Rep. Jim Jordan nominated Kevin McCarthy in the second round of voting for House speaker.

"I rise to nominate Kevin McCarthy for speaker of the House," Jordan said, prompting applause from several Republican members.

"We need to rally around him, come together, and deal with these three things, because this is what the people sent us here to do," he added, ticking through Republican priorities in the new Congress.

"We owe it to them, the American people, the good people of this great country, to step forward to come together, get a speaker elected so we can address these three things. I hope you'll vote for Kevin McCarthy and that's why I'm proud to nominate him for speaker of the House," Jordan said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Bob Good, one of the original "Never Kevin" members, said off the House floor that he plans to vote for Jordan on the second ballot despite Jordan's call to support McCarthy -- and expects other detractors will follow.

-ABC News' Will Steakin

ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl weighed in after the first ballot vote for House speaker.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy fell well short of the majority needed to clinch the position. He received 203 votes, while Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries received 212. Nineteen lawmakers voted for someone else.

"The optics for Republicans is terrible," Karl told ABC's David Muir following the vote.

"They've taken control, they've won control of the House by a narrow majority, and [in the] first act of this Republican House, more votes went to the liberal Democrat candidate for speaker than went for Kevin McCarthy. Think about that David," Karl said.

McCarthy told ABC News, after stepping off the House floor, that the current vote against him was "exactly what we thought it'd be."

McCarthy added that this vote could go on for days and that "we got a number of members who are trying to fight for their own personal items" instead of for the country.

When asked how he what he can do to persuade the large number of members who voted against him by voting for others, McCarthy said he needs to convince them that "they don't win gavels by trying to threaten or leverage somebody … I don't think that's what their constituents elected."

-ABC News' Will Steakin