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I've now read that McCarthy has failed 6 times in his bid to be speaker, many in the past few days. Why is it only him that I'm reading about? Can the Democrats nominate someone too, even if they fail to secure the role of speaker?
Who gets to decide that McCarthy gets a 7th bid, or when someone else can be voted on?
Before each roll-call vote, members-elect are given the opportunity to nominate candidates by the Clerk of the House. They do so simply by stating that they are doing so; take for example the proceedings recorded in the Congressional Record before the first roll-call vote on January 3rd 2023:
The CLERK. Pursuant to law and precedent, the next order of business is the election of the Speaker of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress. Nominations are now in order. The Clerk recognizes the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. STEFANIK).
Ms. STEFANIK Madam Clerk, on behalf of the House Republican Conference, I rise today to nominate the gentleman from California, KEVIN MCCARTHY, as Speaker of the House to lead America’s new Republican majority.
Stefanik then continues on in her speech, concluding with:
Madam Clerk, as the chair of the Re- publican Conference, it is my high honor to present our Conference’s nominee for election to the office of the Speaker of the people’s House, the Honorable KEVIN MCCARTHY from the State of California.
The Clerk then continues, allowing Mr. Anguilar of California to nominate Hakeem Jeffries, and Mr. Gosar of Arizona to nominate Andy Biggs before voting commences.
However, although these three candidates were the only ones formally nominated, members-elect are free to vote for any individual they like, without needing to nominate them to be a formal candidate beforehand. You can see this from the results of the first ballot. The individual doesn't even have to be a member of the House; according to the CRS report Speaker of the House Elections 1913-2021, votes were cast for candidates who were not representatives or members-elect in "1997, 2013, 2015 (both instances), 2019, and 2021".
Supplemental answer to address the news side of it:
You're only reading about McCarthy because the Democrats are business-as-usual (nominate one person, have all D's vote for him) but don't have enough votes for it to matter, and no other Republican is actively trying to become Speaker (as far as I've heard as of this writing).
It's not a "yes/no" vote on McCarthy, it's an open vote between everyone whom a Representative wants to vote for, but the winner has to get an actual majority. In the usual process for Congress, all the Democrats would vote for their candidate (Hakeem Jeffries this year), all the Republicans would vote for theirs (McCarthy), and whichever party had more seats would win. (A few people might cast a protest vote against their party's candidate, but there are few enough of them and enough other members that they don't affect the outcome.) In that scenario, McCarthy would have won 222 to 212 over Jeffries. But because there are a small group of Republicans who refuse to vote for him, and the Republicans have the majority by such a thin margin, he doesn't have enough votes to win - but neither does anyone else.
Since the vast majority of the Republican Representatives want McCarthy as Speaker, they're (theoretically) going to keep nominating him as long as he wants to keep trying, and he will keep failing until enough people change their votes. The Democrats will keep quietly attempting to select Jeffries and watching him also fail to get enough votes, but since that's the expected outcome and there's nothing unusual going on there, it doesn't really make any headlines.
