The California Republican had said he wanted to be a “check” on Democrats.
GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday became just the second speaker in history to be subjected to an effort by rank-and-file lawmakers to take away his gavel — and the first to have it stripped away.
McCarthy faced a so-called motion to vacate after Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and a handful of hardliners put forth the motion after McCarthy, his allies and Democrats passed a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open — legislation that Republican hard-liners said greenlit too much spending.
The intraparty drama underscored the difficulty of leading a raucous caucus in a chamber Republicans control by only five seats — a balancing act that was always anticipated to come to a head.
The California Republican had to go through 15 rounds of voting in January just to clinch the gavel in the first place, his path blocked largely by many of the same rebels who threatened his speakership.McCarthy’s background
McCarthy’s rise from California state politics to the leader of his House conference was been fueled less by less signature policy proposals than relationship-building and a longtime focus on the success of his other members, including a key role in the 2010 midterms.
A Bakersfield native, he has said his path toward politics was influenced by a stroke of luck. As a young man, he won $5,000 after playing the lottery with a friend, which he parlayed, along with money from flipping cars, into a business selling sandwiches.
“I’d gotten interested in politics at the deli,” he told the Los Angeles Times for a profile in 2003.
On the side, he began to cut his teeth among California Republicans, first serving as a staffer to then-Rep. Bill Thomas before chairing the California Young Republicans and then the Young Republican National Federation.
He was ultimately elected to the California state Assembly in 2002 and became the GOP floor leader in 2003. During his time in the state legislature, McCarthy focused on economic issues like reducing the state budget and revamping the state workers’ compensation system, according to his biography.
The Los Angeles Times profile described him as a “political junkie” and a “pragmatist, not a policy purist.” After taking over as party chief in the state Assembly, he said he preferred not to be known as “minority leader” — which could sound irrelevant in a state where Republicans have long struggled for power.
McCarthy went on to be elected to the House in 2007 to fill the seat left vacant when Thomas, his old boss, retired. He, along with former Reps. Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Paul Ryan, R-Wis., were dubbed the “young guns,” the next generation of conservative leadership. In 2010, the trio published a book by the same name to outline a “new direction for the Republican Party.”
They backed spending cuts and smaller government, seeking to reform Washington, they said.
“Through campaign support for those who believe in private-sector job creation, maximized individual freedom and a better America for our children, the Young Guns are changing the face of the Republican Party and giving Americans a road map to get back to the American dream,” a summary for their book said.
In a foreword by journalist Fred Barnes, McCarthy was dubbed the “strategist” of the trio, someone who was “fixated on how to win more elections, more often.”
McCarthy is now the only one of the three still in Congress.
