WASHINGTON — Palace intrigue hit overdrive Thursday as Republican Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California and Pete Sessions of Texas maneuvered for the No. 2 seat in the House of Representatives.
From a standing start late Tuesday, after the shocking primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., McCarthy and Sessions have deployed every tool in the political manual. They’re organizing whip teams, gathering endorsements, lobbying state delegations and squeezing their colleagues one on one.
While McCarthy, who already holds the House’s third most powerful job — majority whip — appears to be the odds-on favorite, both candidates know that vote counts are iffy going into next week’s secret ballot, where promises can prove ephemeral.
“The only way you can be certain of how someone is going to vote is if they look you in the eye and tell you they are voting against you,” Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., said Thursday.
The winner of the House majority leader’s race will have to work closely with the winner of a separate race for majority whip, a post McCarthy has held since 2011. The field grew more congested Thursday.
From the right, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., was already running against Rep. Peter Roskam, an Illinois Republican who’s served as McCarthy’s chief deputy whip. A third candidate, Indiana Republican Marlin Stutzman, jumped into the race Thursday, complicating Scalise’s bid for support from the House’s most conservative members.
Adding yet more spice, Sessions might make a late entry into the whip’s race if he loses to McCarthy.
The House majority leader race between the 49-year-old McCarthy and the 59-year-old Sessions is about more than who’ll take responsibility for House floor action. The next majority leader will be the presumptive heir apparent to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, a 64-year-old lawmaker who’s served in Congress for nearly a quarter of a century.
“I can work with whoever is elected,” Boehner said Thursday, declining to publicly endorse any leadership candidate.
Other high-profile Republicans have made their preferences known.
Cantor, though damaged goods after his primary loss to an obscure college professor, publicly backs McCarthy. So does Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the House Budget Committee chairman and 2012 vice presidential candidate, whose own name was floated as a potential leadership candidate.
Currently ranked number three among GOP leaders, McCarthy enjoys some other advantages over Sessions. He appears to be generally well-liked. He’s spread a lot of campaign money around through his leadership political action committee — $1.2 million last election cycle, compared with $415,000 contributed by Sessions’ PAC.
McCarthy also has a national whip organization already in place. Whip team members have each been given a list of colleagues to check, in an exercise that combines intelligence gathering with persuasion.
“It’s like whipping a bill,” said Rep. Devin Nunes, a McCarthy supporter and fellow California Republican. “You don’t really know anything until the vote is counted.”
The setting of the leadership election next week might also help McCarthy, even as it aggravates some on the right who’d hoped for more time to rally support.
