Kevin McCarthy

(born 1965). American Republican politician Kevin McCarthy represented California in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2023. During his time there, he served as majority leader (2014–19), minority leader (2019–23), and speaker of the House (2023).

Kevin Owen McCarthy was born on January 26, 1965, in Bakersfield, California. After graduating from high school, he briefly attended community college. In 1984 he bought a lottery ticket that proved to be a $5,000 winner. He invested his winnings in the stock market and used his profits to open a deli in Bakersfield. Later in his career, McCarthy often recounted this episode to tout his experience as a small business owner.

In 1987 McCarthy sold his deli and returned to college. He eventually earned both an undergraduate business degree (1989) and a master’s degree in business administration (1994) from California State University, Bakersfield. The year McCarthy returned to school, he began a long association with influential Republican Congressman Bill Thomas. McCarthy initially worked as an intern for Thomas before becoming a full-time member of his staff.

McCarthy raised his profile in Republican politics by chairing the Young Republican National Federation from 1999 to 2001. He was elected to the California State Assembly, the lower house of the state legislature, in 2002. He quickly moved up the Republican leadership ranks in the assembly, becoming minority leader of the chamber in 2004.

Bill Thomas did not run for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006. That year McCarthy was elected to replace him. McCarthy handily won subsequent elections to what was regarded as a safe Republican seat.

In 2009 McCarthy became the House Republicans’ chief deputy whip, assisting party whip Eric Cantor. (Whips work to ensure that all of a party’s legislators vote the same way on specific legislation.) Cantor became the majority leader after the Republicans took control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. McCarthy then took on the role of majority whip. He joined Cantor and future speaker of the House Paul Ryan as a coauthor of Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (2010). In 2014 McCarthy replaced Cantor as majority leader after Cantor lost his seat in a primary challenge.

Republican John Boehner stepped down as speaker of the House in October 2015. McCarthy launched a bid to replace Boehner. However, his candidacy was undermined by a number of factors, including the belief of some on the party’s right wing that he was not conservative enough. McCarthy ultimately withdrew his candidacy, and Ryan became speaker.

The following year Republican Donald Trump was elected president. McCarthy voted reliably in support of Trump’s policies. In 2017 McCarthy notably helped secure the House’s approval of legislation to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), a major health care reform law passed under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. The Republican effort to repeal the PPACA failed in the Senate, however. In 2018 Ryan chose not to run for reelection. After the House swung back to Democratic control following that year’s midterm elections, the Republicans chose McCarthy as minority leader. In that position he defended Trump against allegations that the president had extorted Ukraine to investigate one of his political rivals, Democrat Joe Biden. McCarthy opposed the House’s impeachment of Trump over those allegations in December 2019. The president was acquitted by the Senate in a largely party-line vote in early 2020.

Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Trump claimed that there had been widespread voter fraud, but he provided no evidence for his accusations. On January 6, 2021, a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was in the process of certifying Biden’s victory. McCarthy later rebuked Trump for the role he played in the attack. He stated from the House floor, “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” Nevertheless, McCarthy did not support the House’s second impeachment of Trump shortly before Trump left office on January 20. The House accused the president of having incited the attack on the Capitol. McCarthy favored censuring Trump over his actions instead of impeaching him. In the Senate trial that followed in February, Trump was again acquitted.

The House later formed a select committee to investigate the January 6 attack. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi refused to seat two of McCarthy’s five nominees for the committee, Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan. She argued that they were too closely involved with Trump to participate credibly. In response, McCarthy withdrew his other nominees. In their places Pelosi appointed Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who joined the seven Democrats on the committee. McCarthy went on to brand the committee’s work “a sham process.” He saw to it that Cheney was stripped of her leadership role within the party. Later, however, Trump criticized McCarthy for not having picked other Republicans to replace Banks and Jordan, especially after it became clear that the committee’s findings were damaging to the former president. The committee ultimately recommended that the U.S. Department of Justice charge Trump with several crimes, which included provoking or assisting an insurrection.

When the November 2022 midterm elections were held, the Republicans narrowly retook control of the House. They secured a slim 222–213 majority. A week later the Republican caucus voted 188–31 to retain McCarthy as its leader rather than replace him with right-wing challenger Andy Biggs of Arizona. Weeks of negotiating followed as McCarthy sought to become speaker of the House in the new Congress. He had to win the support of the Republican Party’s right wing, which was reluctant to back him. To become speaker, McCarthy needed to win 218 votes from the full body of the House (barring any absences or votes of “present”) in its opening session on January 3, 2023.

In the first round of voting, on January 3, a small group of hard-line conservative Republicans denied McCarthy the support necessary to become speaker. This was the first time since 1923 that the vote on the speakership required more than one ballot. Successive votes were held over the next several days. Opponents to McCarthy’s candidacy continued to block his ascent to the speakership, despite McCarthy granting them a number of concessions. Most notably, McCarthy agreed to a rules change that would allow any lawmaker to trigger a vote on removing him from the speakership. As the selection process dragged on, speculation began to mount regarding an acceptable compromise candidate to replace McCarthy. Republican Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana headed the list of potential alternative candidates, but Scalise remained supportive of McCarthy’s bid. Finally, in the wee hours of the morning of January 7, McCarthy was elected speaker of the House on the 15th ballot.

McCarthy struggled to find common ground both with Democrats and with those Republican House members who had opposed his candidacy for speaker. On September 30 Congress narrowly avoided a government shutdown. It did so by passing a spending bill to fund the federal government just before a deadline to do so was reached. McCarthy had forged a last-minute agreement with Democrats on the bill, which prolonged funding of the government until mid-November. The Senate quickly approved the bill. However, a number of conservative Republicans felt they had been betrayed by McCarthy. They were upset that their demands for budget cuts and other aspects of their agenda had not been met.

On October 3 a group of right-wing Republican House members sought to remove McCarthy as speaker. The House voted on McCarthy’s leadership. Eight Republicans joined all Democrats present in voting 216–210 to remove McCarthy from the speakership. This marked the first time in history that a speaker had been ousted through a House vote. The following December McCarthy announced that he would resign from the House at the end of the year.