After losing his speaker title last week, Kevin McCarthy sent conflicting messages about his political future and personal ambitions. Theres still.
After losing his speaker title last week, Kevin McCarthy sent conflicting messages about his political future and personal ambitions. There’s still uncertainty in the conference about whether Rep. Steve Scalise can get the 217 votes needed to fill the House leadership vacuum, but McCarthy has taken one unknown off the table, pledging to remain in Congress and run for reelection.
“I’m not resigning. I’ve got a lot more work to do,” McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol late last week shortly after his removal.
Part of that work will inevitably be one of McCarthy’s biggest strengths: helping other Republicans win their campaigns. In a news conference immediately after his removal, McCarthy promised to continue assisting fellow Republicans to try to retain and expand their House majority.
The news helped calm some GOP jitters that he would exit the political stage and take his massive fundraising trove with him. Already this cycle, McCarthy has collected $9 million in his personal campaign committee and nearly $4 million in his leadership PAC. He’s also helped several outside groups, including the Congressional Leadership Fund and the American Action Network, an affiliated nonprofit, rake in a total of $80 million, $20 million more than their previous record in the early months of 2021.
McCarthy’s reassurance that he would run for reelection also meant party operatives don’t need to scramble to find a strong candidate to replace him amid an already intense focus on California races.
California has the highest population of any state and, thereby, the most House seats of any other delegation – 52 to be exact, after losing one when the 2020 census showed an exodus of residents. The state is well-known for the far-left policies emanating from solidly blue Sacramento, but there are several pockets of red and purple, making it a top election focus for both parties.
For the past three election cycles, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the path to the Democratic House majority runs through California. Last year, New York played an unusually outsized role, giving the GOP three House seat pickups in large part because of its messy redistricting process that pitted several sitting Democrats against one another.
But California’s sheer number of competitive seats over the last several election cycles commands both parties’ attention and resources, and that won’t change this year. Democrats hope that a presidential race and the contest to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein will drive up Democratic voter turnout.
Baseball great Steve Garvey, 74, who played for both the Dodgers and the Padres in the late 1970s and 80s, earlier this week waded into the crowded field of Senate contenders as a Republican, boosting GOP hopes of improving their turnout next November as well.
Even before House Republicans had nominated Scalise to succeed McCarthy, some Republicans deeply familiar with district-by-district dynamics privately discussed concerns that McCarthy’s ouster would hurt the party’s fundraising ability, and specifically his California GOP colleagues’ chances in competitive reelection races.
Others believe the self-inflicted chaos of toppling a speaker is bound to have some immediate fallout when it comes to attracting the number of independent voters needed to win in the 18 districts across the country that voted for Biden but where a Republican holds the seat.
