J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) arrives as House Republicans hold a closed-door meeting to vote on their candidate for Speaker of the House, October 11, 2023, at the Capitol in Washington.
In 2020, the House Antitrust Subcommittee, under the direction of a chief counsel by the name of Lina Khan, held a field hearing in Boulder, Colorado, as part of an investigation into Big Tech platforms. The subcommittee took testimony from four small businesses about their struggles competing with the likes of Amazon and Google. And the intended audience for the event was really one man: Ken Buck, who served as the subcommittee’s ranking Republican. After all, it was held in his home state.
Buck was a Tea Party conservative when he won a U.S. Senate primary victory in 2010 over a more moderate alternative. His loss in the general election to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) was seen as another example of a winnable race lost to far-right extremism. But after later prevailing in a deep-red House district, Buck became gradually interested in corporate power. He has described the field hearing as a turning point, where he started to recognize how dominant tech platforms can destroy free markets and competing firms.
When the subcommittee released its landmark report in 2020, something that has served as the intellectual precursor to future antitrust lawsuits against Google and Amazon, Buck didn’t sign on, but put out his own version that agreed with practically all of the findings and even some of the recommendations on legislation. He later wrote a book called Crushed, which was ostensibly about Big Tech’s “war on free speech” (the comfortable terrain upon which conservatives tread when they criticize the likes of Google and Facebook), but which also contained significant details about how platforms damage free markets, prevent competition, and increase prices.
So after Republicans took the House majority in 2022, it was natural to assume that Buck would ascend to the chairmanship, providing a rare partner from the right on competition issues, at least as they relate to Big Tech. But then Ken Buck ran into Jim Jordan. Ironically, this week, Jordan ran back into Buck.
Jordan (R-OH) is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which is where the Antitrust Subcommittee is housed. So it was Jordan’s decision on whether or not to elevate Buck to chair that subcommittee. He did not, instead giving the gavel to Rep. Tom Massie (R-KY), a free-market libertarian with little interest in government action on antitrust. Massie promptly renamed the subcommittee to incorporate the phrase “the administrative state.” It has held exactly two hearings this legislative session: One of them, as you might guess, was about “reining in the administrative state.”
Buck has been essentially everywhere opposing Jordan, telling media outlets that Jordan wouldn’t concede that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
I should mention at this point that Jordan, despite his bluster about online censorship, is a major ally of Big Tech. He opposed the bipartisan antitrust bills that went before the House last year, even the relatively innocuous one (which became law) that increased merger filing fees. He initiated the attack on Lina Khan’s ethics, which landed like a lead balloon in a hearing in July. Jordan has also been a willing recipient of Big Tech campaign contributions, receiving over $45,000 from Google’s PAC and employees over the years, as well as a contribution from a lead attack dog for Big Tech, Adam Kovacevich, while he was a lobbyist for Google. Similarly, lobbyists for Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook have also donated to his campaigns since 2020.
Overall, the communications and electronics industry has given Jordan hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. And Jordan and his staffers have taken junkets and meetings with leading technology-focused trade groups and Big Tech CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook. Jordan’s close ties to the Koch network, which opposes regulation on the tech industry, underscores his position on these issues; Koch Industries has been the fourth-largest donor for Jordan in his career. Two of Jordan’s leading staffers on this topic, Tyler Grimm and Chris Hixon, are alumni of George Mason University and its Mercatus Center, another bastion of pro–Big Tech sentiment.
After being spurned for the subcommittee chairmanship he wanted by a water carrier for Big Tech, Buck suddenly this week found himself in a position to deliver some payback, when Jordan decided to make a bid for House Speaker. And Buck has moved forward with gusto.
Buck has been essentially everywhere opposing Jordan, telling media outlets that Jordan wouldn’t concede that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and that he couldn’t support any Speaker candidate who failed to do so. Buck went further on CNN, explaining that “I don’t want someone who was involved in the activities of January 6 … There’s no way we win the majority if the message we send to the American people is we believe in the election was stolen, and we believe that January 6 was a tour of the Capitol.” He voted twice against Jordan and for Tom Emmer for Speaker, even as he admitted, “I don’t like Tom Emmer.”
I can’t look into Ken Buck’s soul. He didn’t vote to impeach Donald Trump for his January 6th activities (though I should add that he opposed the Jordan-led investigation into impeaching Joe Biden, too). He did not vote to contest the 2020 election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. I have no idea if January 6th or the Trumpian Big Lie is really a major issue for him. But it seems reasonably clear that Buck’s problem with Jim Jordan has a lot, if not everything, to do with the fact that Jordan deposed him from the leadership of the House Antitrust Subcommittee. And Buck’s media tour, leading the effort to stick the knife in Jordan’s Speakership bid, seems very aligned with avenging that betrayal.
Jordan attempted to gain the Speaker’s gavel through a campaign of intimidation and bullying. But his downfall was in some way tied to who he stepped over along the way. He was just a bit too openly solicitous of Big Tech, and it bit him back in a big way. Maybe there’s a lesson in there.
