What the McCarthy succession fight says about Republican politics

Today's special election to replace Kevin McCarthy in Congress reflects a larger struggle over the Republican Party.

The ex-speaker’s protégé and former staffer, Vince Fong, is the prohibitive favorite to win the remainder of McCarthy’s unserved tenure. If Fong beats Tulare Sheriff Mike Boudreaux tonight and becomes Congressman Fong, he’ll wield a potent advantage in the November contest for a full two-year term.

That would be a win for McCarthy, who has worked hard to boost the Central Valley state lawmaker. It would also vindicate GOP officials and funders who are promoting establishment-friendly Republicans over the kinds of far-right insurgents that drove McCarthy from the speakership and out of his safe red seat.

The Nevada-based Conservatives for American Excellence dropped $500,000 into the pro-Fong PAC as part of a larger strategy to boost mainstream Republicans over conservatives allied with the anti-establishment Club for Growth and the far-right Freedom Caucus.

McCarthy — who has embarked on a retribution operation against the Freedom Caucus dissidents who pushed him from power — has fundraised for Fong in person and helped to broker a critical endorsement from former President Donald Trump. A McCarthy-linked PAC has poured $450,000 into a pro-Fong Super PAC that boosted the candidate and hit Boudreaux in the March primaries.

As he works to secure Fong's victory, McCarthy is also thinking about his own legacy closer to home.

“He saw what happened with Boehner — a Freedom Caucus person took over his seat,” said a person familiar with McCarthy’s thinking who was granted anonymity to describe the former speaker’s motives. “He looks at this and wants to make sure his kind of person takes this seat.” (California Republican Party Chair Jessica Millan Patterson described McCarthy this weekend as still “heavily engaged in California Republican Party politics.”)

Boudreaux may not be a card-carrying Freedom Caucus member, but he is running against the Bakersfield Republican machine that propelled Fong, McCarthy, and ex-Rep. Bill Thomas before that.

Like McCarthy, Fong is running for his ex-boss’s open House seat. Like McCarthy when his career cut through Sacramento, Fong is seen as more of a conventional conservative than a radical agitator.

But the Republican Party has changed since McCarthy got to Washington — in large part because of the norm-discarding, establishment-defying president whom McCarthy embraced to attain the speakership. Fong is hoping to surf those changing tides into DC as his former boss looks to exert what influence he has left.

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