Kevin McCarthy To Leave Congress At End Of The Year

Ted Johnson
·3 min read
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Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that he will resign his congressional seat at the end of the year, bringing to an end an often tumultuous tenure in GOP leadership.

“I will continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest to run for elected office,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op ed that was published on Wednesday. “The Republican Party is expanding every day, and I am committed to lending my experience to support the next generation of leaders.”

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McCarthy was ousted as House speaker in October, after just 10 months, amid bitter divisions with members on the far right. He faced a decision on his future this week, the deadline for filing for reelection for his Bakersfield area congressional seat.

His exit will leave the GOP with an even smaller majority in the House, although it’s expected that McCarthy will be succeeded by a Republican after a special election given the partisan make up of the district.

McCarthy’s decision is not a surprise. At the time of his ouster, there were initial reports that he planned to retire, but he denied them and even suggested that he was planning to run for reelection. But last week, as the filing deadline loomed, he told The New York Times DealBook conference that he was weighing his options, a major signal that he was more likely than not to forgo another run. A major ally, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who served as speaker pro tem after McCarthy’s ouster, announced his retirement on Tuesday.

McCarthy’s speakership was on thin ice from the start. He was elected after 15 rounds of voting, taking place over a week in January, but always faced the looming prospect of a motion to vacate. That is the legislative maneuver that allowed just one House member to bring a motion to the floor to remove the speaker, something that his nemesis, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), ultimately did in October. With all Democrats and eight Republicans voting to remove him, McCarthy found himself out of the job he had long prized. Gaetz and others on the far right said they were upset over McCarthy’s deals with Democrats to avoid a government default and later a government shutdown. But McCarthy blamed Gaetz’s own personal animosity, stemming from McCarthy’s refusal to step in during an ethics investigation of the Florida congressman.

McCarthy was first elected in 2006 and rose through the party ranks. He was part of what was billed as a new generation of congressional leaders to counter Democrats during Barack Obama’s presidency. He, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan even co-authored a book, Young Guns, in 2010. As it turned out, their emphasis on fiscal restraint was outshone by the culture wars on the far right. Cantor, who had been House majority leader, was defeated in his primary in 2014. Ryan served as speaker of the House, but declined to seek another term in 2018 amid battles with the right flank and Donald Trump’s White House.

McCarthy, who had been a fundraising juggernaut, helped the GOP win back the majority in 2022. But he also faced intense criticism from so-called never-Trump Republicans for his embrace of Trump after the attack at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

More to come.

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