GOP primary candidates are weaponizing Kevin McCarthy’s endorsements

An endorsement from Kevin McCarthy was supposed to be a blessing for Republicans in competitive primaries next year.

But now primary challengers see it as a liability.

McCarthy’s ouster from the speakership is a sudden opening for primary contestants who have already gone on the attack against the frontrunners who earned his endorsement.

“Voters don’t want a McCarthy Republican,” Joe Earley, who is running against a McCarthy-endorsed candidate in West Virginia, said in a statement to POLITICO. “They want a true conservative, and this situation has exposed how poor a job that McCarthy has done and that my opponent has refused to reject his endorsement.”

And few of McCarthy’s benefactors have come to his defense.

McCarthy threw his weight around in competitive races early in the 2024 cycle, backing candidates for at least eight House seats: Tom Barrett in MI-07; state Rep. Heidi Kasama in NV-03; West Virginia state Treasurer Riley Moore in WV-02; former state Rep. Craig Riedel in OH-09; former Rep. Yvette Herrell in NM-02; Scott Baugh in CA-47; former Rep. Mayra Flores in TX-34; and Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln in CA-09.

All of these races — with the exception of the open primary in the deep red WV-02 — are on the NRCC’s target list. McCarthy is a prolific fundraiser and has an extensive political network that was poised to boost these candidates. It’s unlikely that will immediately crumble away just because he’s no longer House speaker. But some Republicans running for Congress see his firing as fodder to take down their opponents who earned his endorsement.

Kasama has “McCarthy's backing, the same guy who's let us down time and time again,” former Nevada state Sen. Elizabeth Helgelien, one of Kasama’s primary opponents, said Wednesday. She added that the “district deserves better than someone who’s okay with broken promises.”

NV-03 has been a top target for cycles, as Republicans attempt to unseat Democratic Rep. Susie Lee. McCarthy’s candidate of choice last year, April Becker, lost to Lee by around 4 points.

Helgelien, who launched her campaign with a video of her holding a gun while decrying "weak" leadership, was the first Republican to enter the race back in March. McCarthy endorsed Kasama shortly after she announced her bid in August. Both Helgelien and Drew Johnson, a conservative columnist also running for the seat, have sought to label Kasama as a “Republican in name only” or a “liberal.”

Some took McCarthy’s downfall as an opportunity to rail against the establishment.

Max Ukropina, who’s running against Baugh in CA-47, said in a statement that he’s “not focused on Washington power games or big K-Street endorsements.” And Nate Cain, another WV-02 candidate, went after “McCarthy and the RINO establishment.”

Over in OH-09, J.R. Majewski took shots at the former speaker on a conservative podcast, saying that McCarthy “deserves it” because he “manipulated elections,” blaming him for not supporting Majewski in the midterms when a story came out that he lied about his military records.

Majewski, who lost to Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in 2022, recently reentered the primary after dropping out to take care of his mother while she recovered from a surgery. Majewski had previously expressed frustration that McCarthy and other members of House leadership threw their backing behind Riedel.

Herrell told POLITICO in a statement that she was “saddened” by the proceedings and that McCarthy “did not deserve to lose his job.” Baugh’s campaign said it had no comment, and the other campaigns did not respond to a request for comment.

A version of this story first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Pro.