In case you didn't know it yet, the "Gang of 8" who helped jettison House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the Speakership, could well be political toast. While some are championing their courageous stand, others are blaming them for destabilizing the U.S. House of Representatives, and more egregiously, the GOP. Whatever your take, their Congressional careers are now in question. Some are probably fine with that, as they had greener pastures in mind to begin with. Others may have put themselves in the crosshairs of people in their party, their congressional colleagues, and their constituents.
Any word for these eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy?
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) October 4, 2023
They are - Matt Gaetz (FL) - Nancy Mace (SC) - Andy Biggs (AZ) - Matt Rosendale (MT) - Eli Crane (AZ) - Ken Buck (CO) - Tim Burchett (TN) - Bob Good (VA) pic.twitter.com/7eH9AiUYzW
Let's unpack.
Matt Gaetz (Florida)
The bad boy of Congress, Rep. Matt Gaetz stands by those creds and takes every opportunity to double down on them. Gaetz has burned a lot of bridges with his colleagues, which means he is neither well-liked nor trusted. This action of ousting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was probably his final grandstand. Rumors on the ground say he is planning a run for Florida governor in 2026.
“He’d be the front-runner in any Republican primary he wants to run in right now,” said State Representative Alex Andrade, a Republican who represents the Pensacola area, which is in Mr. Gaetz’s Panhandle district. “He’s got his finger on the pulse of the Republican base better than anyone I see.”
The ambitious Mr. Gaetz boasts significant name recognition and is a favorite to receive Mr. Trump’s endorsement. He knows how to dominate the news spotlight. And he has extensive connections with political operatives, lobbyists and donors from across Florida, dating back to his and his father’s years in the State Legislature and to his role leading Gov. Ron DeSantis’s transition in 2018.
Much could happen between now and 2026. But the potential for a new job outside of Washington might be a welcome notion for Mr. Gaetz, who was first elected to the U.S. House in 2016.
Being the man who toppled McCarthy only burnishes Gaetz' supposed conservative credentials, and increases his national profile. And lest we forget, Gaetz is also under ongoing investigation for ethics violations.
Since 2021, he has been under an ethics investigation over allegations of sexual misconduct, drug use, sharing inappropriate videos on the House floor, using campaign funds for personal use, and improperly accepting gifts.
But as for the rest, this could be the highest (or lowest) point of their careers.
Ken Buck (Colorado)
According to local sources, Buck has gotten a reputation as the "Liz Cheney of Colorado." Ouch.
U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Windsor Republican and member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, is facing criticism and potentially a primary challenge since he hasn’t shown support for impeaching President Joe Biden.
A group of far-right House Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry alleging Biden while he was vice president profited from his son’s international business scheme, but Buck is among a faction of Republicans who say they haven’t seen any substantial evidence.
The representative for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, which covers the eastern part of the state and has a strong Republican lean, penned a column in the Washington Post in which he urged the GOP to prioritize avoiding a government shutdown as opposed to the Biden impeachment inquiry. He cited a lack of evidence that the president was ever involved in his son’s business dealings.
“Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment are relying on an imagined history,” Buck wrote.
Because of this and other actions by Buck that have made voters question his allegiance to the Republicans in Colorado, Buck may have a credible challenger for 2024.
Colorado state Rep. Richard Holtorf, an Akron Republican, said Buck’s lack of support for an impeachment inquiry doesn’t sit well with voters in the 4th District.
“An inquiry is just an inquiry — they’re just looking into things, getting a little additional subpoena power maybe,” Holtorf said.
Buck’s team did not respond to a Newsline request for comment.
Despite being a member of the Freedom Caucus, other far-right Republicans such as U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have questioned whether Buck’s constituents will continue to support him. Holtorf told Colorado Public Radio he is considering challenging Buck in a primary. He’s working on building an exploratory committee to determine whether a run is something he will actually pursue.
Matt Rosendale (Montana)
In a Montana's Messenger exclusive, it was reported that Rosendale actually prayed that the 2022 midterms would not render a red wave for the GOP, putting his loyalties to the Republican Party and the people of Montana in question. In 2018, Rosendale ran for the Senate against Jon Tester, and obviously, we know the outcome. According to Messenger, Rosendale plans to run for Senate again in 2024, which makes this vote to oust McCarthy an effort to polish his tough conservative credentials.
Addressing a closed briefing, Rosendale said he hoped for as narrow a margin in the House as possible so that a small set of conservatives could “drag the conference over to the right.”
The Montanan made the comments last week as he and a small band of House Republicans attempted to steer the federal government into a shutdown over concerns about spending. The Republican is considering a rematch with Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in 2024, a decision that would lead him to face off with top Senate Republican recruit Tim Sheehy in the primary.
“Look, we have shown, OK, with a very small handful of people, six at times, five at times, that we can have tremendous impact in that body and when a lot of people, unfortunately, were voting to have a 270, 280 Republican House, I was praying each evening for a small majority,” Rosendale said during the zoom briefing that featured the Montana Republican, conservative Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and former top Trump official Steve Bannon.
Rosendale was mocked by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) -- for this move and his aspirations.
Maryland Matt Rosendale prays for Democrats to win elections? Did God answer his prayers in 2018 when Jon Tester humiliated him?
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) October 4, 2023
This is just one of many, many reasons that Maryland Matt won’t come within a country mile of the Senate. https://t.co/3JNnSyD2Na
Andy Biggs (Arizona)
Andy Biggs is a known commodity in his conservative district of Arizona and throughout the state. From 2002 until 2017, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, he was deep in Arizona's political life, serving as both state legislator and state senator.
Biggs’ political career began in 2002, when the Tucson native successfully ran to represent the 22nd legislative district in Arizona’s House of Representatives. He kept the seat until he was elected to the Arizona Senate in 2011, going on to serve as the president of Arizona's Senate during his last four years in office.
Some chapters of his political ascent border on auspicious. In 1993, he won the $10 million American Family Sweepstakes, which he credits with making him financially independent. Later, when he ran for U.S. House in 2016, he beat out the next Republican primary contender by a razor-thin margin of nine votes.
Since then, Biggs has held office for four terms, easily winning re-election last year in the solidly Republican district.
Word from the locals in his district is that he is who he appears to be. A solid conservative who works for the people of Arizona and the American people. Like KY Rep. Thomas Massie, his record consistently reflects this. Arizona has been trending purple of late, so look for the Democrats to run an opposition candidate in his district. There are still plenty of McCain Republicans left in Arizona to throw in their lot with the Democrats. It does not matter that Biggs assisted in ridding them of McCarthy. It is a zero-sum game, and as someone who seems to be one of the few principled representatives in the House, Biggs may face a battle for his seat in 2024.
Eli Crane (Arizona)
Much like Biggs, Rep. Eli Crane is a conservative true believer. Crane is a freshman in the House and expressed his unease with the direction of the House under Speaker McCarthy's leadership.
In addition, Crane, a freshman lawmaker, expressed his discontent with House Republican leadership before the vote.
— Rep. Eli Crane (@RepEliCrane) October 3, 2023
Crane is also in a solidly red district, and his constituents may well applaud this stance. However, as a new representative, he is vulnerable to being picked off.
Tim Burchett (Tennessee)
After his vote to oust McCarthy from the speakership, TN Rep. Tim Burchett said in a podcast:
Speaker McCarthy, his major concern is with staying in power. We had a conversation a few weeks ago on Saturday. And the last thing he said to me was, I really want to be the speaker.
And to me, that typified pretty much everything. What do we got that will get the votes, not what are we principled? What are we going to fight for?
And that, to me, is not leadership. That is just a barometer. You stick your finger up in the air and figure out which way the wind’s blowing. And then you jump out in front of it and take credit for it.
That is not leadership. That is nothing to rally around. And the differences between him and Pelosi — and I catch a lot of hell for saying this, but she was an effective leader.
And she would get an issue, put a stake in the ground and call people in, and say, this is where I’m at. Where are you? And then when she put her proposal out, it would win. And that was because of that style of leadership. And that is something we’re not doing.
It was time for change. We will move forward and elect a Speaker that keeps their word and uses every tool at their disposal to help the American people. pic.twitter.com/IF3siAGVjR
— Rep. Tim Burchett (@RepTimBurchett) October 4, 2023
Burchett is not wrong, and for another representative from a deeply red Tennessee district, this may play well for him come 2024. According to a profile from January, Burchett is affable and was well-liked on both sides of the aisle, but he is deadly serious about getting the job done.
Approachable and unguarded, Burchett is perhaps one of the least filtered members, making comments even to reporters that most politicians would fight to bury. His wisecracking and jovial nature have attracted him friends on both sides of the aisle, despite his conservative voting record, in a time when the House’s cross-party relationships are growing rarer. Asked about his unusual freewheeling approach, he replied that his constituents from East Tennessee “don’t care about that stuff.”
“I don’t take myself seriously. I take the job seriously,” Burchett said in an interview, one day before Christmas Eve.
Dependent upon who gets the votes next week to become the new Speaker may well determine Burchett's status in the House and in his district. Because Burchett made a stand against McCarthy, when the majority of the Republican representatives stood behind him, may make him more of a liability than an asset.
Bob Good (Virginia)
Like Burchett, VA Rep. Bob Good considered McCarthy more interested in holding on to power than he was in actually balancing a budget.
Good asserted in a floor speech Tuesday that McCarthy was more interested in remaining Speaker than in cutting spending.
“The Speaker this past Friday in the Republican conference meeting made it abundantly clear that he was willing to do anything to avoid the temporary discomfort and the pressure of a pause in the 15% of nonessential federal government operations, which would guarantee that we would lose to the Senate Democrats and the White House,” Good said.
Good flipped a blue district to red in 2020, and rode the Glenn Youngkin wave—instead of the purported "red wave"—to even greater victory in 2022. Good won his newly redrawn 5th District by 61 percent versus the 52 percent he won in 2020. But commentary is now mixed concerning his record. Some constituents are applauding his bold move to vacate the Speaker chair, others are calling him a RINO. Virginia is officially a battleground state, with red, blue, and purple people all in the mix. So, expect a primary challenge from both Democrat and Republican quarters. There is no doubt a faction of the Virginia GOP who did not care for Good's alignment with Matt Gaetz.
Nancy Mace (South Carolina)
The long knives are most certainly out for Rep. Nancy Mace, as my colleague Jeff Charles reported.
Several GOP members of Congress have reportedly lashed out at Mace for siding with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who led the effort to remove McCarthy as speaker.
Seven of the eight Republicans who voted to sink Kevin McCarthy’s speakership were longtime conservative critics. There was one unexpected rebel who McCarthy’s allies say committed the worst betrayal of all.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) triggered audible gasps on the House floor when she joined seven hardliners in torpedoing McCarthy during Tuesday’s historic ouster vote. That decision is now clouding her future in the GOP, not to mention imperiling the status of her relatively competitive seat next year, as scores of angry Republicans mull possible retribution.
McCarthy and Mace didn’t always see eye to eye, but the California Republican had helped Mace secure her seat in Congress by pumping millions of dollars into her once-struggling campaign. Mace’s move to aggressively fundraise off her vote to bounce McCarthy is only intensifying her colleagues’ anger toward her.
Charles added:
In Mace’s case, her vote for McCarthy’s ouster was even more egregious to House Republicans given that she had been a close ally of McCarthy’s in the past, unlike the rest of the GOP lawmakers who voted against him. Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) called Mace’s vote “disgraceful” and accused her of trying to bolster her political brand. “If the purpose is because it’s going to help me build my brand and gonna bring a little bit more money to my campaign, then I think you need to question why you’re here.
As if on cue, Mace is indeed fundraising on that vote, something that she condemned Matt Gaetz for in January when he did the same on his blocking Kevin McCarthy's speakership for the first 14-vote rounds.
Nancy Mace explains using her vote for McCarthy's ouster to fundraise after criticizing Matt Gaetz for the same thing.
— Jeff Charles, An Awful Pundit🏴 (@jeffcharlesjr) October 6, 2023
"I made the decision to fundraise over the last 24 hours because of the threats that I have received over fundraising...the establishment is coming after me." pic.twitter.com/NHPuTInQw5
Because of Mace's inconsistent record, and like her new buddy Gaetz, she does not have the most collegial relationship with her fellow representatives, Mace may suffer the same fate as Good: Democrat and Republican challengers sucking the oxygen (and money) from her campaign. Mace had a few Republicans who challenged her in 2022, but thanks to Kevin McCarthy's backing, she squeaked out a win. For 2024, the odds may not be in her favor.
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