Kevin McCarthy Dispatches Allies to Negotiate with 20 Conservative Holdouts

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) dispatched lawmakers Tuesday evening to negotiate with the 20 conservative holdouts preventing McCarthy from becoming Speaker of the House.

McCarthy sent a group of Republican lawmakers to cut a deal with the 20 conservatives before the renewed voting Wednesday at noon, according to Punchbowl News. His allies included Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), French Hill (R-AR), Garret Graves (R-LA), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA).

The two sides reportedly negotiated for a couple of hours, but no deal was reportedly made between two factions.

Coupled with negotiations, McCarthy reportedly told McHenry to convey to all the Republican lawmakers the demands of the 20 conservatives. “Everyone needs to be on the same page about what the needs are for rules and structural changes so we can have Speaker McCarthy elected,” McHenry said.

About 10 percent of the Republican House majority opposed McCarthy’s speakership bid Tuesday. McCarthy was 16 votes short of reaching the needed threshold for the gavel.

On Tuesday, after three rounds of voting that produced no Speaker, McCarthy told reporters the result was not what he had hoped but that Republican’s slim House majority presents a difficult challenge.

“Today, is it the day I wanted to have? No,” McCarthy said. “If you look at the last 70 years, no one has ever had this slim of a majority to try to become speaker for the first time.”

McCarthy also stated no other candidate has enough votes to defeat him.

“Is there anybody in the conference that can win?” McCarthy asked. “I don’t think that’s there. So we can go ‘round and ‘round. It will either turn out that someone will make a mistake and they’ll elect a Democrat or we’re going to find a way to work together to be able to govern.”

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.