State may regain House top spot
Bakersfield’s McCarthy could be elected speaker
WASHINGTON — Kevin McCarthy, the prematurely gray, 50-year-old former “young gun” Republican from Bakersfield, is heir apparent to become speaker of the House of Representatives with the surprise resignation of embattled Speaker John Boehner of Ohio on Friday.
With Democratic leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco showing no sign that she intends to retire anytime soon, the powerful but deeply divided California congressional delegation would have the top two jobs in the “people’s chamber” of Congress should McCarthy win election by his colleagues.
The leadership election is yet to be announced, but presumably will take place before Boehner leaves office in a month. Vicious internal power struggles are expected to roil the leadership even if McCarthy wins the top slot. Rep. John Garamendi, a Walnut Grove Democrat, said the turmoil comes at a bad time as the fiscal year ends, requiring votes on new spending bills and new authorizations for transportation and other basic government functions.
“Whoever becomes speaker is going to have to cut deals with the Tea Party Republicans,” involving everything from committee chairmanships to funding for Planned Parenthood, Garamendi said. He warned of a “serious possibility that the entire operation of the
House is turned into chaos.”
Boehner’s unexpected announcement, a day after he hosted Pope Francis in a historic address to Congress, came in part to forestall McCarthy’s potential deeply conservative challengers, who had been plotting to unseat Boehner.
The devoutly Catholic Boehner said in a teary press conference that he woke up after the “awesome sight” of the pope’s address, said his morning prayers and decided, “I’m going to do this. Simple as that.”
Boehner said he had wanted to resign earlier, but stayed on after the previous speaker-inwaiting, Virginian Eric Cantor, was toppled last year in a shocking primary upset by a Tea Party upstart. Cantor’s loss was McCarthy’s gain, as the Californian moved easily into the job of majority leader, a post he has held only a year.
Faces same challenges
But McCarthy faces the same challenges that proved the undoing of both Boehner and Cantor.
Tea Party conservatives have caused perpetual headaches for the Republican leadership since the party gained control of the House in 2010, making the chamber appear at times ungovernable. Refusing to compromise on matters ranging from the federal budget to family planning, House conservatives are fueled by a grassroots anger among Republican primary voters who feel they have been betrayed by compromising leaders in Washington.
A small-business moderate early in his career, McCarthy has moved right with the national GOP since he entered the House in 2007 on issues such as immigration, but never has been closely allied with the party’s fire-breathing conservative wing.
His rise is due in part to his success in recruiting House candidates and raising money. That could potentially earn him loyalty from members who thought nothing of bucking Boehner.
Even so, McCarthy will face the same “antiestablishment feeling that is going throughout the country, particularly among Republican primary voters, that’s being pushed by Donald Trump’s message,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “It’s this message going on in Republican circles that everyone in politics is lying to you and is bad at their jobs and Republican leaders are the worst of all because they’re elected to represent your views.”
McCarthy has been embarrassed several times on big legislation when he came up short of votes, forcing Republican leaders to pull bills from the floor at the last minute. He “couldn’t count his toes,” said a top House Democratic aide.
Pelosi, by contrast, in the majority and minority, has unified notoriously fractious Democrats behind controversial legislation, from health care reform in President Obama’s first term to the recent Iran nuclear deal.
Carl Guardino, head of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a tech business alliance, countered that McCarthy has demonstrated leadership skills and “an insatiable appetite for both policy and politics,” a combination many politicians lack. McCarthy “listens and learns and then leads,” Guardino said.
Pelosi and McCarthy
Pelosi had a good working relationship with Boehner, but has had little direct contact with McCarthy, despite both being Californians. The pair will undoubtedly work more closely together if McCarthy becomes speaker.
Constantly wary of conservative rebellions, Boehner was reluctant to turn to Pelosi for Democratic votes to pull the government off various “fiscal cliffs” when House conservatives preferred shutting down the government to compromise with Democrats or even the Republican-led Senate. But occasionally he had to.
Boehner’s departure is unlikely to change that dynamic, which would continue to provide Pelosi outsized leverage in the minority. “To keep the trains on the tracks they are going to have to have Democratic votes, and to get Democratic votes they’re going to have to have Democrats at the table,” the Democratic aide said.
Still, said Garamendi, “It’s always a good thing to have a speaker from California,” a huge advantage to the state when Pelosi held the office. “Much of it was done without a great deal of fanfare,” he said, including hundreds of millions of dollars tucked into the economic stimulus of 2009 for water recycling.
California’s delegation, however, mirrors the partisan chasm in the House. California members hardly even socialize across party lines, and remain deeply fractured over such key issues as water resources that should in theory unite the state. McCarthy has pushed drought legislation that would shift more scarce water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, showing no inclination to work with California House Democrats who strongly prefer such measures as water conservation and recycling.
If McCarthy becomes speaker, “California will be well positioned on a variety of issues with one exception, and that is the delta,” Garamendi said. “That is of concern and we will simply have to work our way through it.”