House Majority Leader-elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blamed crossover votes by Democrats for Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) surprise primary defeat at the hands of David Brat in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Monday.
He stated that was surprised by Cantor’s defeat, and did say that “all politics are local” when asked why he thought Cantor lost. McCarthy added that he had “read five different analyses” and one theory he came across was “Democrats voted 30 percent in [that race].”
He added that “I don’t even think it’s one thing that does it, I think it’s a number of things,” but then spent the rest of the discussion on Cantor railing against open primaries and quoted an unnamed analysis that stated 30 percent of the voters in the Cantor-Brat primary were Democrats.
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