ATOP THE OLYMPUS TLP OIL RIG IN THE GULF OF MEXICO — With one arm snaked around his crutches and the other gripping a handrail, Steve Scalise climbed gingerly up hundreds of stairs to the peak control room of a hulking oil rig 77 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

By all accounts, Scalise, the House majority whip, shouldn’t have been here. Doctors said he was millimeters away from death in June after a gunman’s bullet ripped through his hip and pelvis, injuring internal organs during an early morning softball practice. Scalise only recently ditched his electric scooter and started walking again with crutches.


“Who’s wearing the Fitbit?” Scalise, donning navy coveralls and a yellow hard hat, joked as he neared the top, some 200 feet above water.

Scalise’s recovery has coincided with his fast-rising stature within the House Republican Conference. This time a year ago, he was seen as a dependable but unremarkable member of Paul Ryan’s leadership team. Now the 52-year-old is being talked up as a possible successor to Ryan when the House speaker retires.

A cluster of House Republicans has privately encouraged Scalise to embrace his new star power and prepare a campaign for speaker, according to multiple GOP lawmakers. One member recently introduced Scalise to donors as “the next speaker of the House.” And the talk bubbled to the surface this week when two GOP lawmakers — Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Mo Brooks of Alabama — vocalized what others have whispered privately for weeks.

“The rumor mill is that Paul Ryan is getting ready to resign in the next 30 to 60 days and that Steve Scalise will be the new speaker,” Amodei said.

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The 30 to 60 days part isn’t true, according to Ryan’s office and a host of other leadership sources. But people close to Scalise say he’d be interested when Ryan does retire and if Republicans keep the House this fall. He’d make a move, however, only if Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) were not to run or fell short, Scalise’s allies say.

In an interview Tuesday in Louisiana’s southern-most port, Scalise acknowledged his desire to lead the conference someday but said now isn’t the time to discuss it.

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Scalise said of a bid for speaker if the circumstances were right. “Obviously, I’ve shown interest in the past at moving up. I’ve enjoyed being in leadership. I feel like I’ve had a strong influence on some of the things that we’ve done, and I’ve helped put together coalitions to pass a full repeal of Obamacare.”

He went on to say that he also worked closely with Ryan, McCarthy, and Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady on tax reform. “I want to keep doing this,” Scalise said.

Scalise cautioned, however, that talk of Ryan’s retirement are “rumors” and said for now he’s focused on passing President Donald Trump’s agenda and working to keep the House in GOP hands.

“It’s easy to get drawn into the palace intrigue and speculation. But if you do that, you truly will lose focus on what your mission is, and that is working with President Trump to advance a conservative agenda,” Scalise said. “The stakes are way too high for us to lose sight of what we need to do right now."

Scalise returned to the House last fall after several months in the hospital recovering from the shooting. But reminders of that day still follow him everywhere, including on Tuesday’s oil rig tour. His purple crutches stood out against a maze of gray piping and steel that make up the 40-story high Shell rig called Olympus. He moved slowly as rig workers showed him and four fellow Republican lawmakers the massive drill bits and wells used to extract oil more than 22,000 feet below the ocean floor.

Never far from his side was U.S. Capitol Police Special Agent David Bailey, the man who saved Scalise’s life and, along with another agent, killed the gunman. During a roundtable discussion back on shore that afternoon, a roomful of local business leaders erupted in applause when Scalise introduced Bailey to his constituents.

Scalise doesn’t have feeling in his left shin, and he can barely flex his left foot because of nerve damage caused by the bullet. His internal organs are still recovering, and he's expecting to undergo another surgery in April.

In the interview, he talked about his three-times-a-week physical therapy. His doctors have incorporated baseball, one of his favorite pastimes, into the recovery routine, though Scalise acknowledged that he probably won’t be playing second base for the GOP team again this spring.

“It’s hard to make lateral movements right now, but if the ball came to me right now, I could get it. I could make the throw to first base ... without falling over,” Scalise said, standing up and swooping down to demonstrate fielding an imaginary ground ball.

Despite his impaired mobility, Scalise has tried to return to normal as quickly as possible. After an eight-hour surgery in January, he was supposed to go home to rest but instead went straight to the Capitol amid the fight over a government shutdown.

In February, he started traveling again to raise money for fellow Republicans, as leaders are expected to do. During one of those recent events, Rep. Roger Williams of Texas introduced Scalise to his donors as the “next speaker.” (Williams’ chief of staff, Colby Hale, said the remark was “lighthearted,” but added that “if and when Speaker Ryan decides it’s time to no longer be speaker, Congressman Williams thinks Whip Scalise would be a natural leader to step up.”)

The past nine years, Scalise has invited lawmakers to Louisiana to learn about offshore oil production that support his district’s bayou economy. His guests this year included GOP Reps. Mark Walker of North Carolina, Jodey Arrington of Texas, John Curtis of Utah and Greg Gianforte of Montana.

Shell officials gave the members tours of what essentially operates as a mini-city on water, taking them through everything from the oil drilling process to the purification of salt water for drinking and life on the rig.

“Where’s the karaoke room?” Scalise said at one point when a rig-dweller talked about how he spends his free time.

Scalise was plainly in good spirits showing off his home turf. When Arrington complained about a high-pitched noise during the helicopter ride en route to the rig, Scalise cracked that it was revenge for those in the cabin who voted against the recent omnibus package. (Walker and Gianforte opposed the measure.)

During lunch, he praised the rig cooks, declaring that “this is better than Rayburn” House Office Building cafeteria food.

Scalise also talked to his colleagues about coastal erosion, the types of crude oil his district exports to other countries and his desire to open up more of the Gulf to drilling. The members asked officials about regulations that hurt the industry.

If Scalise was physically hurting after the long day of climbing, he didn’t show it.

“I may be a little bit slower this year,” he said, “but it felt good to be out there.”