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LA Times: “Kevin McCarthy was the last card holding up the house that we call the California Republican Party. He was the last reason any money — any serious money — was actually moving through the operation.”
Today, the Los Angeles Times released a report on the aftermath of Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as Speaker of the House — the danger it poses to increasingly vulnerable California Republicans.
Beyond losing a massive source of funding with McCarthy’s departure, self-proclaimed moderates Duarte, Valadao, Garcia, Kim, Steel, and Calvert all decided to abandon their constituents in favor of “the deeply archconservative Louisiana Republican they’ve elevated to the post second in line for the presidency” – Mike Johnson.
Los Angeles Times: Why the fall of Kevin McCarthy leaves California Republicans in a tough spot
Erin B. Logan | November 2, 2023
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Since House Republicans unanimously elected Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson as speaker last week, the GOP has sought to portray itself as an emboldened party willing to battle President Biden and the Democratic-controlled Senate.
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But for California Republicans, Johnson’s election presents a host of potential problems that could make trying to survive in a deep-blue state even harder than it already was.
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Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster is the first of those challenges. McCarthy’s fundraising allies have said they will work with Johnson to ensure the money continues to pour into Republicans’ coffers. But Johnson is relatively unproven as a fundraiser, and McCarthy, who pulled in more than $500 million last election cycle, rose to the top of his party in part because of his ability to rake in dough.
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The loss of McCarthy from upper leadership could have especially dire consequences for California’s state Republican party, which has long relied on him to keep money coming into the Golden State, said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican consultant who’s become a critic of the party.
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“Kevin McCarthy was the last card holding up the house that we call the California Republican Party,” Madrid said. “He was the last reason any money — any serious money — was actually moving through the operation.”
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Now that McCarthy is out as speaker, “that money is going to dry up very very quickly,” Madrid added. “The state party is going to have a very difficult time keeping its head above water while it’s already sinking.”
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Even before his first election to Congress in 2006, McCarthy demonstrated his value by raising money and sending funds to fellow candidates and the National Republican Congressional Committee. As he rose the ranks in party leadership, donors were more eager to hand over their cash. This was a godsend to the state party, which had struggled to raise enough money to field competitive candidates in safer Democratic districts.
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Even if the money keeps flowing, California Republicans have another problem: Democrats are eager to tie them to the deeply archconservative Louisiana Republican they’ve elevated to the post second in line for the presidency.
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“Johnson is as extreme as they come. He led the plot to overthrow the 2020 election. He’s a Trump loyalist. Above all, he’s a MAGA extremist,” a new ad from the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic aligned nonprofit, warns California voters. “This is who John Duarte voted for. Tell him to stop putting MAGA over the American people.”
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The nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its rating of Valadao’s race from “lean Republican” to “toss-up” on Tuesday. The fight over the speakership “supercharged House Democrats’ confidence that they can flip the five seats they need to reclaim the chamber by convincing swing voters that ‘dysfunctional’ Republicans can’t be trusted with the keys to power,” wrote Dave Wasserman, a senior editor and elections analyst at Cook.
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“Californians are eager to reject the extremism that [Valadao]’s been enabling,” Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a news release.
- That sort of attack may have some resonance in California. Although McCarthy may have been unpopular with Democrats, he was a Californian. The differences between his home of Bakersfield and the rest of the state are not as vast as the differences between California and the Deep South.
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Though McCarthy declined to certify some of the 2020 presidential election results, Johnson went a step further and rallied more than 100 Republicans to back his brief endorsing a lawsuit to overturn the election. Johnson has repeatedly backed measures to ban abortion nationwide and worked for a nonprofit, labeled an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, that defended the state-sanctioned sterilization of transgender people. These are viewpoints at odds with many voters in swing districts.
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