Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) plan to get revenge on the Republicans who ousted him got off to a rocky start.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) on Tuesday night comfortably held off two challengers in the primary, including one who received support from groups linked to McCarthy, winning a clear majority in her district and avoiding a possible runoff. Mace was the front-runner for the election, having the support of former President Trump and current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
His victory was a setback for McCarthy, raising questions about his political influence within the Republican Party.
“To summarize a sports analogy, Kevin McCarthy is 0 and 1 right now, and he will have to put up a significant showing in the next few races he is involved in to determine whether or not he still has a power lever to pull. in Washington, D.C., politics,” said Dave Wilson, a Republican strategist based in South Carolina.
Months of conservative backlash against McCarthy following a contentious 15-vote election for House speaker finally boiled over last October, when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) introduced a motion to remove McCarthy from his position.
The turning point was that McCarthy chose to introduce a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government without any of the Republicans’ top priorities and with Democratic votes to approve it.
Mace was one of eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy in his historic impeachment last year, alongside Gaetz and Reps. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and others — some of the members more conservatives in Congress.
Rosendale and former Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colorado), another member of the group, have chosen not to seek re-election to another term, while the remaining six are all running.
But Mace was in her own category in the group of eight, as she is a much more moderate member of the House than the other defectors. Instead, she turned on McCarthy over promises she alleged the then-Speaker of the House made to her and broke.
McCarthy’s allies decided to identify and elevate the main challengers to the so-called Gaetz eight, while the former House speaker publicly sparred with Republicans who berated him. McCarthy himself also refused to rule out supporting challengers to these incumbents.
From him political action committeeMajority Committee PAC, made a $10,000 donation to Mace’s main rival, Catherine Templeton, as she sought re-election to her South Carolina seat, Federal Election Commission records show. Another group linked to McCarthy, the American Prosperity Alliance, reportedly spent $2.1 million against Mace.
But the South Carolina congresswoman easily defeated Templeton in Tuesday night’s primary, moving closer to a third term and dealing a blow to McCarthy’s revenge efforts.
But Chip Felkel, another GOP strategist based in the Palmetto State, was skeptical about McCarthy’s impact, given the former president’s presence in the race. Mace, who was once a critic of Trump, this time threw her support behind Trump and won the primaries with his support.
“This is old news,” Felkel said of the impeachment vote. “McCarthy is gone. He’s out of the picture. Many of these Trump voters see McCarthy as part of the problem and part of the establishment, and I don’t think it’s a difficult leap for them.”
Wilson, on the other hand, said that while Trump’s endorsement won’t hurt in a state like South Carolina, its potency depends on the state.
“Did it help last night? The evidence after the election says it didn’t hurt. So if you’re looking at a Trump versus McCarthy game at play here in politics, it’s Trump one, McCarthy zero. We’ll see what the next competitions will be like,” said Wilson.
Gaetz, Crane and House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good (R-Va.) will also face competition from their own parties in primaries later this year.
Good faces a Trump-backed challenger in Virginia state Sen. John McGuire (R). In this case, Trump and McCarthy are on the same side.
Good drew the former president’s ire by initially endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential race. Although he moved quickly to support Trump after DeSantis dropped out of the race, Trump argued that support came “too late” and backed McGuire.
MC PAC also donated $10,000 to McGuire. Good’s primary may present a better opportunity for McCarthy to succeed than Mace’s race.
In Arizona, Crane also seeks re-election with Trump endorsement.
In Florida, Gaetz, who is named after Trump endorsementwill face in August the main challenger Aaron Dimmock, a former naval aviator, who was endorsed by McCarthy.
While the primaries may not result in full referendums on the political power of Trump or McCarthy, the results could provide important signals of the influence of an endorsement of the former president following his historic conviction in a criminal case in Manhattan last month, experts said. . They could also indicate the staying power of the “Gaetz eight” now that McCarthy is out of the House.
Republican strategist Brian Seitchik noted that Mace had Trump’s endorsement and significant resources to get his message across to voters, complicating assessments of McCarthy’s influence in the race.
Despite donations from McCarthy groups, Mace significantly outperformed his opponents in the primaries, leading more than US$2.2 million compared to Templeton’s approximately US$660,000.
“It’s difficult to read too much into Mace’s victory and paint it as a symbol of McCarthy’s failure,” he said. “It’s too early to assess McCarthy’s influence at this point.”
Good’s race in Virginia is just a week away, when he will try to avoid becoming the first incumbent in the 2024 cycle to lose the primary.
“It’s really hard to compare the two races because the differential issue between Mace and Good isn’t McCarthy…it’s all about support for Trump,” said Brian Kirwin, a Virginia-based Republican strategist.
McCarthy’s firing is not “the decisive issue or the deciding factor that people might think it is,” Kirwin said.
Seitchik said each primary race varies from district to district, but McCarthy may have a better chance of knocking out an incumbent who has no prior experience facing a serious primary challenge. He pointed out for the first time that Good ran in a traditional primary for the Republican nomination, rather than the party conventions where he prevailed in 2020 and 2022.
A survey sponsored by the Virginia Faith & Freedom Coalition released this month showed McGuire leads Bom by 10 points, 41 percent support 31 percent, but 30 percent of respondents were undecided.
Seitchik said an incumbent who hasn’t faced a serious challenge may not have as well-developed a fundraising base, which could give McCarthy and his allies an advantage.
“The reality is that you would still prefer that Team McCarthy and its allies not turn against you. This doesn’t guarantee you’ll lose, but it’s certainly not an ideal situation for anyone,” Seitchik said.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
