Kevin McCarthy could be one step closer to his goal of being speaker, following Tuesday’s House GOP leadership elections.
Kevin McCarthy has long wanted to be speaker of the House, and will likely be one step closer to that goal following Tuesday’s House GOP leadership elections. But the strategy he’s employed to realize his dream may turn it into a living nightmare.
He spent the better part of the past two years crisscrossing the country in order to ensure that Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms. As the House Republican leader, he’s gone to rubber chicken dinners and fundraisers with buffet tables stacked high with shrimp cocktail across the country. He’s spent countless hours on the phone recruiting candidates and soliciting donations. As a result, he and his allies entered the midterms with about half a billion dollars to spend and a slate of candidates Republicans were excited about.
He’s also had to walk a tightrope, trying to keep all factions of his party happy, balancing the needs of swing-district moderates with the desires of far-right Trump devotees. McCarthy excoriated former President Donald Trump on the floor of the House a week after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Only weeks later, he went to Mar-a-Lago to mend fences and pose for a photograph with Trump.
In the most literal sense, McCarthy succeeded. Republicans are almost certain to hold an absolute majority of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives in 2023.
But, he may still end up falling short of his ultimate goal of becoming speaker. Republicans are likely to have one of the smallest House majorities in recent history, made up of members with diverse ideologies and varying personal allegiances to McCarthy. The challenge for the California Republican is whether he can successfully tame the most recalcitrant members of his conference and get the 218 votes necessary on the floor of the House in order to achieve his long-cherished goal.Who is Kevin McCarthy?
McCarthy has been the leader of the House Republicans since 2019, after then-Speaker Paul Ryan decided not to run for reelection to Congress after two tumultuous years under President Trump. A Republican from Bakersfield, California, McCarthy was first elected to Congress in 2006, succeeding longtime incumbent Bill Thomas. McCarthy had been a staffer for Thomas before becoming a member of the California State Assembly, where he became minority leader in his first term.
