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Kevin McCarthy’s Many Promises Set Stage for Dramatic Ouster
California lawmaker’s winning streak finally ran out, in fight with a small band of GOP dissidents
Kevin McCarthy, a political operator with no fixed ideology, empowered some of the populist candidates who would transform Congress.
Kevin McCarthy, a political operator with no fixed ideology, empowered some of the populist candidates who would transform Congress. JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
By Siobhan HughesFollow
Updated Oct. 4, 2023 2:44 pm ET
Kevin McCarthy has traced his successful run in life and politics to a lucky lottery ticket. This week, his luck ran out.
McCarthy rose through the ranks as a political operator with no fixed ideology, propelling himself to the House speakership through fundraising prowess and years of recruiting populist candidates who transformed Congress, starting with the 2010 tea party wave. His affable style—he developed relationships by having meals and working out at the gym with other members—was matched to a philosophy that his role was to elevate other members.
“I believe in bringing new blood up and helping them,” McCarthy said to reporters on Tuesday night.
That approach helped win McCarthy the speaker job, but ultimately helped take it from him after just nine months. GOP moderates and conservatives liked him but didn’t necessarily embrace him as one of their own. In his bid to help members, McCarthy stretched too far, lawmakers said, making promises that collided with other promises that he then couldn’t keep. And in the end, many Republicans—as well as Democrats who declined to rescue him—said they just didn’t trust the speaker.
McCarthy lost the vote to oust him as speaker 216-210, with eight Republicans siding with Democrats in seeking his removal. Hours later, he said he wouldn’t seek to be renominated as speaker, citing the headaches of working with GOP holdouts or having to rely on Democrats.
He gave what amounted to a farewell press conference on Tuesday night, running through his life story, from growing up in Bakersfield, Calif., winning a $5,000 lottery prize from a ticket bought in a grocery store, starting a sandwich business and then getting his first taste of politics. He quoted from Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, saying he considered himself the “luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”
But he didn’t shy away from discussing the forces that pushed him out of office. After nine months as House speaker, the same populist forces that McCarthy had tapped into as he helped remake the House Republican conference overwhelmed him after he helped engineer a short-term spending deal to keep the government funded. He traced the pivot point to a House rules package under which a single lawmaker could bring a motion to vacate the chair—which in a narrowly divided 221-212 House meant that a small group could remove the speaker on a whim.
“My fear is the institution fell today, because you can’t do the job if eight people—you have 94%, or 96% of your entire conference—but eight people can partner with the whole other side. How do you govern?”
He said that he knew dissidents would seek to oust him after the spending deal. “I’m at peace with it,” he said.
He indicated that he was stung by what he saw as some colleagues’ disloyalty, after he empowered many rebels with plum committee assignments, sought-after floor votes, and the initiation of an impeachment inquiry aimed at President Biden.
“A lot of them I helped get elected, so I probably should have picked somebody else,” McCarthy joked to reporters when asked what he could have done differently to prevent his own ouster.
McCarthy had been dogged for months by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, the brash GOP dissident who repeatedly threatened to try to remove him from office. Gaetz finally pulled the trigger on Monday, leading to Tuesday’s vote.
Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz on Tuesday outside of the U.S. Capitol, after he successfully ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his leadership role. PHOTO: BRANDEN CAMP/ZUMA PRESS
Gaetz alleged that McCarthy hadn’t kept his promises to conservatives, particularly regarding advancing all 12 annual appropriations bills individually. McCarthy said Gaetz had a personal vendetta, in part related to a continuing Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, and that his attacks were about building his own brand, not about policy.
In comments to Fox News on Tuesday night, Gaetz said, “Speaker McCarthy’s time is over. I wish him well. I have no personal animus to him. I hope he finds fruitful pastures, and I’m certain he will.”
McCarthy’s job security was always going to be tenuous in a Republican conference that pushed out Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner less than a decade earlier, and he came into the job aware of the capricious nature of leadership.
“It’s Republican nature that they want to take down their leaders, it’s just what they do,” he said in an interview before the midterm elections.
As House minority leader when Democrats were in charge, he gave wide latitude to the most outspoken Republicans in the conference, including ones who questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 elections, protested vaccine mandates and demonized the Justice Department, and he was the shoo-in for speaker if Republicans won the 2022 election.
The GOP did take back the majority, but earned fewer seats than anticipated, making McCarthy’s challenges more acute. He won the speakership after 15 ballots after finally winning over enough dissidents with a series of promises.
Many of the 20 Republicans lawmakers who voted against McCarthy wanted to focus on the country’s debt and deficit. In the end, it was the spending bills that sealed his fate—a deal with President Biden to raise the debt ceiling in June and another on Saturday to avoid a government shutdown. Both measures passed with more House Democrats than Republicans and fed a sense of grievance among the bloc of dissidents.
McCarthy and his allies said that dissidents had put him in a double bind—spending months blocking him from advancing individual spending bills aimed at imposing deep cuts, only to complain when those same bills hadn’t advanced. McCarthy said he was left with no choice but to put a surprise short-term spending bill on the House floor, one that Democrats first said they couldn’t trust but which they ultimately almost universally supported.
“I took a risk for the American public,” McCarthy said. “Regardless of what anybody says, no one knew whether that would pass.”
