WASHINGTON (AP) — President Mike Johnson begins a tough fight for his gavel, a weeklong campaign that begins Wednesday in the House Republican leadership election and will establish the new centers of power in Congress for a Washington dominated by President-elect Donald Trump. .

Johnson and his leadership team are all working behind the scenes to build the support needed to stay in office. Even though Johnson has no serious challenger, he faces dissension within his ranks, particularly from far-right conservatives and the Freedom Caucus, who are withholding their votes in order to pressure for pledges to come.

The speaker is expected to welcome Trump before the vote, presenting a united front.

“This leadership will be operational to implement President Trump’s agenda,” Johnson said Tuesday on the steps of the Capitol as lawmakers returned to Washington.

It’s been a remarkable political journey for Johnson, the accidental president who emerged as the latest and best choice to replace ousted former President Kevin McCarthy more than a year ago and quickly set course by positioning himself alongside Trump and leading Republicans in the election.

As Johnson puts it, Trump is “the coach” and he is the “quarterback” as their Republican team prepares to run the games in the new year.

Johnson has embraced Trump’s agenda of mass deportations, tax cuts, a reduction in the federal workforce and a more muscular image of the United States abroad. Together, they worked on what the speaker called an “ambitious” 100-day agenda, hoping to avoid what he called the mistakes of Trump’s first term, when Congress was unprepared and had lost “precious time”.

“We will be ready from day one,” Johnson said.

While Johnson hopes to lead the House in a unified government, with Trump in the White House and Republicans having taken the majority in the Senate, the House is expected to remain closely divided, even as control of the House remains undecided with final elections including in California, still too early to do so. call.

But the problems with a narrow House majority that plagued Johnson’s first year as president, as his own ranks regularly revolted against his plans, are likely to spill over into the new year, with a potential new wave of chaotic government.

Johnson needs only a simple majority in Wednesday’s closed-door vote to win the GOP nomination for president. But he will need the support of a majority of the entire House, or 218 votes, to take the gavel on Jan. 3, when the new Congress meets and elects its president. It took McCarthy about 15 rounds of voting in a week-long election to take the gavel in 2023.

Trump made Johnson’s problems even more complicated by appealing to House Republicans for his administration, further reducing the numbers. Some Republicans want House leadership elections postponed until control of the House is fully decided.

Yet with Trump in the White House, the speaker could benefit from a period of goodwill from his own ranks, as Republicans are eager to disrupt norms of governing and institutionalize the second-term agenda of Trump.

“His defiance is what he’s always been,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the Freedom Caucus, said of Johnson.

But he added: “With Trump in charge, it will be easier for him to keep his promises. »

Conservatives are debating whether to run their own candidate to send a signal to Johnson as they push for their own priorities, using the same tactics they used with McCarthy to force the president to make concessions, especially on deeper budget cuts.

As Johnson begins the budget process for next year, including using a so-called budget reconciliation process that makes it easier, under a unified government, to promote Trump’s agenda in the House and Senate by simple majority votes, conservatives want him to load these packages with their own policy priorities.

Democrats, who have helped Johnson govern repeatedly in Congress — providing the votes needed to keep the federal government funded and fending off efforts by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to remove him from office — likely won’t help him during the new year. .

“The voters voted for them,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Let’s see what they do.”

It’s not just the election of the president on Wednesday, but Republicans will also determine their leadership by down-ballot.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise, also of Louisiana, and GOP Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, are expected to navigate their way to re-election as leader.

The No. 4 position, House GOP conference chair, is the most contested with Trump’s decision to nominate Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York as ambassador to the United Nations. His departure opens the position that is being contested by several Republican lawmakers.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.