Kevin McCarthy set for US Speaker’s job

Kevin McCarthy has won a leadership vote that keeps him on the path to grasping the Speaker’s gavel – and becoming second in line to the presidency.

Republican Kevin McCarthy in Washington on Tuesday. Picture: Getty Images

Spurned by his party once before in his bid to lead the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy has won a leadership vote that keeps him on the path to grasping the Speaker’s gavel – and becoming second in line to the presidency.

Tuesday’s vote was a symbolic loyalty test among Republicans, but it solidifies Mr McCarthy, 57, as the frontrunner when the Speaker is elected on the first day of the new congress in January.

Mr McCarthy has led the Republican caucus in the lower house since 2014, and has strived to replace Democrat Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, who is next in the line of succession after the Vice-President, Kamala Harris.

The brass ring was nearly in his hand late on Tuesday as the ­Republican Party edged to within one seat of obtaining the 218 seats needed to replace the Democrats as the majority party.

Mr McCarthy, who represents the conservative enclave of Bakersfield in liberal California, has been in politics for most of his adult life, as a state and federal politician.

He doesn’t have any major legislative achievements to his name and has not chaired a house committee, unlike each of the last three speakers. But he is a consummate networker, admired for his prolific fundraising and his people management.

“I actually think that he is a bit underestimated,” Brendan Buck, a former McCarthy staffer and an aide to the past two Republican speakers, said on his new political podcast, Control.

With a Democratic White House, Republicans see the Speaker’s job as a relatively straightforward task: object to every policy proposal by President Joe Biden and dog his administration with investigations.

Mr McCarthy has had a handful of run-ins with far-right figures in his party, whom he is accused of failing to rein in, and one of them, Arizona congressman Andy Biggs, says he will challenge ­Mr McCarthy and that “his speakership should not be a foregone conclusion”.

But Mr McCarthy’s troops ­appreciate his winning streak – he has now picked up seats in two consecutive cycles – and his hard work on the road will have earned him loyalty from the newcomers whose campaigns he boosted.

Outside his own caucus, Mr McCarthy and former president Donald Trump have been useful to one another since the business magnate first took office, enjoying a largely cordial relationship.

Mr Trump would have no difficulty wrangling enough support among his house allies to block Mr McCarthy’s ascent, but he remains supportive of the politician he calls “my Kevin”.

Mr McCarthy berated Mr Trump over the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, but days later made a pilgrimage to Florida to visit the former president.

The son of a firefighter and grandson of a cattle farmer, Mr McCarthy grew up in a working-class household. He married his high school sweetheart and the couple still live in the first house they bought, where they raised two children.

After four years in the California assembly, he entered the US House of Representatives in 2007, steadily working his way up and becoming Minority Leader in 2019.

He ran for speaker in 2015 but dropped out amid a right-wing backlash to perhaps the biggest blunder of his career, over the deadly 2012 Benghazi attack.

AFP