WASHINGTON – The shake-up from the scandal over lobbyist Jack Abramoff may extend far beyond the resigned majority leader, Tom DeLay, with an influential faction of congressional Republicans calling for the party’s entire House leadership slate to face an election that would prompt a “self-examination.”

Behind the effort to force new elections is Rep. John Sweeney, a Republican of New York, who first issued his call for mid-Congress votes on all House leaders last week. Since then, Mr. Sweeney, who represents the Saratoga area, and a California colleague, Rep. Dan Lungren, have been working the phones to drum up support for the measure among fellow Republicans.

“We’re confident,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Sweeney, Melissa Carlson, said yesterday. A new leadership election can be addressed only at an official meeting of the House Republican Conference, and, according to rules adopted by the conference earlier this year, a House aide said, a petition signed by 50 members is required for a member to call a meeting. Ms. Carlson said the number of congressmen supporting Mr. Sweeney’s initiative has already reached 30, and that the proposal would almost certainly receive sufficient backing to bring it before the conference as it gathers on February 2 to replace Mr. DeLay.

Mr. Sweeney’s office has declined to make the full list of supporters public, but was willing to disclose that, in addition to Mr. Lungren, Reps. Anne Northup, of Kentucky; Melissa Hart, of Pennsylvania; Mary Bono, of California; J.D. Hayworth, of Arizona; Christopher Cannon, of Utah; Gil Gutknecht, of Minnesota; Thaddeus McCotter, of Michigan, and Howard “Buck” McKeon, of California, have signed their names to the petition.

“The time has come for those who wish to lead this Conference to rise to the challenge, unite the party and stand before the Conference to outline a clear agenda for returning to the values that we as Republicans hold dear,” Mr. Sweeney wrote in a letter that will go to the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Deborah Pryce, of Ohio, if the signature threshold is crossed, pursuant to conference rules. The purpose of the Sweeney-Lungren drive, Ms. Carlson said, is to make would-be Republican leaders respond to the current state of the Republican Congress, and to prompt the conference toward “a real-self examination of what they stand for,” even if the new elections prove to be uncontested-in which case the elections would be “confidence votes.”

“He’s not running for any position, he’s not endorsing any candidate for any position,” Ms. Carlson said. “But he feels that in the wake of the Abramoff scandals, anyone who wants to lead our conference ought to be able to come forward and … address the issues we’ve been tainted with, and say we’re not a part of them.”

Mr. Sweeney’s proposal would require all eight leadership posts to be vacated, and for leaders to be re-elected if they wish to retain their posts. In the absence of special mid-Congress elections, leadership terms are for two years. In effect, Mr. Sweeney’s measure would pressure four Republican leaders: Ms. Pryce; the deputy chairman of the conference, Rep. Jack Kingston, of Georgia, and the conference secretary, Rep. John Doolittle, of California. Mr. Sweeney is also calling for a referendum on a fellow New York Republican, Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who serves as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, tasked with retaining and expanding on GOP seats in congressional elections.

Some leadership seats will already require new elections without Mr. Sweeney’s efforts. The majority leader post is vacant after Mr. DeLay’s departure. The majority whip, Roy Blunt, is acting majority leader and is running in the February 2 contest to retain that post. The current deputy majority whip, Eric Cantor, of Virginia, is looking to vacate that leadership position to step into Mr. Blunt’s. The chairman of the House Policy Committee, John Shadegg, of Arizona, resigned his position earlier this month to contest Mr. Blunt and another majority leader contender, Rep. John Boehner, of Ohio.

The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, would be exempt from the Sweeney-Lungren effort, because the speaker is elected by the full House, not the majority-party conference.

Even if Mr. Sweeney does not obtain the 50 signatures required to force the measure before House Republicans, Ms. Carlson said, the congressman will definitely raise the issue at the conference meeting already scheduled for February 2 by making a motion for a vote on holding new across-the-board elections. Whether the conference takes up the issue from the petition or a Sweeney motion, a majority vote of the 233 House Republicans would be required for new elections to be held.

Leaders from the 109th Congress were dismissive yesterday of any threats to current leadership posts posed by Mr. Sweeney’s efforts. Mr. Reynolds’s office referred requests for comment to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and a spokesman, Carl Forti, responded yesterday: “If that’s what the conference wants, that’s what they get.” As NRCC chairman, Mr. Reynolds is responsible for improving on the Republican majority in this year’s congressional elections. Of possible attempts by other Republicans to assume Mr. Reynolds’s job, Mr. Forti said: “If this is shaping up as a rough election year, I’m not sure anyone would sign up for that.”

A spokesman for Mr. Shadegg, Michael Steel, responded that “Congressman Shadegg made his position clear” on new leadership elections “by resigning his position and calling on other candidates to do the same.” Mr. Blunt has not resigned his post as majority whip, which he plans to retain if he does not triumph in next month’s contest for majority leader.

Most recent tallies appear to place Mr. Blunt as the favorite in that race, as his aides announced last week that he had secured commitments from 117 Republicans, representing a majority. Yesterday Mr. Blunt’s office released an updated list of congressmen who have made their support public, representing around 90 legislators.

Mr. Boehner, meanwhile, has racked up 46 public supporters. Of the nine congressmen besides Mr. Sweeney who have called for new leadership elections, five support Mr. Boehner, and the remaining four have made no public commitments.

Mr. Shadegg’s camp, which has collected endorsements from several conservative organizations and publications, has declined to make public the number or identities of supporters. Some Shadegg backers, however, have announced the commitments themselves, most notably Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Michael Pence, of Ohio, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a 100-member congressional conservatives’ caucus. A press conference scheduled for today by Rep. Jeff Flake, of Arizona, a conservative who has been highly critical of the current Republican leadership, could yield another public endorsement.

Congressional observers, however, caution that anything is possible in House leadership races until the last moment, as the votes are conducted by secret ballot. New York’s nine Republicans have yet to indicate any public commitment in the race.