What’s an Election Loss When He’s ‘My Kevin’? McCarthy Appears Set to Lead House G.O.P.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/us/politics/kevin-mccarthy-house-republican-leader.html

Version 0 of 1.

WASHINGTON — As the death toll rose in devastating fires raging across California on Monday, Representative Kevin McCarthy got on the telephone with President Trump to explain how bad it was.

In a call from his Capitol office on Veterans Day, Mr. McCarthy, who represents California’s Central Valley, laid out for Mr. Trump the severity of the conflagrations that have ravaged his state and the destruction they were causing, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Several hours later, Mr. Trump, who had threatened in a weekend Twitter post to revoke federal money for California for the “gross mismanagement” that he said had fed the flames, instead declared a disaster in the state, freeing federal funds to be used for those affected.

Mr. McCarthy would seem to be in a precarious spot, the No. 2 Republican leader when his party was shellacked on Election Day, now seeking a promotion to No. 1. But being on the speed dial of a mercurial president who has called him “my Kevin” is one of Mr. McCarthy’s chief arguments for why he should be the one to lead House Republicans out of their newfound political wilderness.

The other argument — one he has made repeatedly to crestfallen colleagues as the grim results continue to trickle in — is his track record as a dogged campaigner and political strategist who has performed years of political spadework recruiting, nurturing, campaigning and raising money for Republican lawmakers and candidates.

“The biggest responsibility of a minority leader in the House is to lead his party back into the majority, and Kevin McCarthy is uniquely well suited to do that, because he has already helped dig the Republicans out of an even deeper hole than they’re in now,” said Michael Steel, a former senior aide to Speaker Paul D. Ryan and John A. Boehner, his predecessor.

Mr. McCarthy is not without detractors, some of whom say he lacks the rhetorical firepower and conservative toughness to propel Republicans back into the majority. He faces a challenge from Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founder of the conservative Freedom Caucus, who argues that it was mismanagement by Mr. McCarthy and other party leaders that led to this month’s debacle.

“We need somebody who’s actually willing to go toe-to-toe and be able to throw the knockout punches,” said Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, a Freedom Caucus member backing Mr. Jordan. “Kevin does a really good job raising money and whatnot, but I think at this point, we really have to defend what we’ve been able to get done in the last couple years and you have to actually duke it out rhetorically, and I think Jordan’s constitutionally more comfortable with that than Kevin.”

During a news conference the day after the election last week, Noah Wall, the vice president of advocacy for FreedomWorks, a fiscally conservative group backing Mr. Jordan, laid Republicans’ defeat squarely at the feet of House leaders. “If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then a vote for Kevin McCarthy for minority leader is a vote for insanity,” he said.

But few expect Mr. Jordan to corral anything close to enough votes to take down Mr. McCarthy, who has raised more than $60 million for Republican races during the past two years, his staff said, traveling to 46 states to boost 75 incumbents and 22 candidates.

Mr. McCarthy, a golden retriever of a man who hates to be by himself, once cozied up to the president by bringing him a curated jar of his favorite cherry and strawberry Starburst candies. He excels at building the kind of relationships that his allies say will be crucial to leading an effective minority.

“If Kevin McCarthy is alone, does he exist?” joked Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, alluding to the Californian’s uber-social nature. “He thrives on human interaction, and that is his natural sweet spot, and I think this job, the job of minority leader, is a matter of knitting us all together.”

It is common for lawmakers and strategists to preface their remarks about Mr. McCarthy by noting that he is “not a policy guy,” which can double in Washington as a euphemistic put-down, the legislative equivalent of saying that a potential mate has a great personality. There is no denying that Mr. McCarthy, who is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of congressional districts and warm relationships with rank-and-file Republicans, has less interest in the technical details of policy than Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin, who revels in his reputation as an “ideas guy.”

And Mr. McCarthy is not always savvy about how he approaches an issue. When he decided six weeks before the midterm contests to introduce a bill to fully fund Mr. Trump’s border wall over seven years, he neither worked with the White House nor gave advance notice that it was coming, according to two people familiar with the conversations who spoke of condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.

Still, for Republicans licking their wounds from this month’s drubbing and looking toward a grim two years in the minority where they have little ability to influence policy, Mr. McCarthy’s political talents appear to be matched to the moment.

Groomed by Bill Thomas, the former House Ways and Means Committee chairman who represented his Bakersfield district, the bubbly Mr. McCarthy succeeded his more cerebral and irascible boss in 2007 and quickly worked his way up through Republican ranks, rising to the third-ranking position within four years. He was one of the “Young Guns,” a triumvirate of 40-something conservatives including Mr. Ryan and Eric Cantor who styled themselves the future of the Republican Party, and published a book whose cover depicted them all, smiling and impressively coifed, on the balcony of the Capitol.

Mr. Cantor, then the No. 2 Republican, was defeated in a primary in 2014 by Dave Brat, a college professor who harnessed Tea Party discontent to topple him, and Mr. McCarthy slid easily into the job. (Mr. Brat is among the Republicans swept out by Democrats in last week’s elections.) A year later, Mr. Boehner, facing a revolt from the Freedom Caucus, was forced out as speaker. Mr. McCarthy was the presumed heir apparent, but he stumbled over policy pronouncements and infuriated allies by blurting out that a committee investigating the Benghazi attacks was created to sink Hillary Clinton’s popularity. He took himself out of the running.

Now Mr. Ryan, another Young Gun, is retiring, and the lone survivor, Mr. McCarthy, is in line for the top job.