Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced he will not run for Speaker of the House again after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) succeeded in his effort to oust him from his speakership on Tuesday.
Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman the broke news that McCarthy would not run for speaker again shortly after he was ousted.
BREAKING NEWS — KEVIN MCCARTHY will not run for speaker again.
He is about to make the announcement in closed GOP meeting
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 3, 2023
The motion to remove McCarthy succeeded by a 216-210 vote, as Breitbart News reported.
Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Ken Buck (R-CO), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Bob Good (R-VA), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Matt Rosendale (R-MT), and Gaetz joined Democrats in voting to remove McCarthy.
McCarthy later addressed reporters and took questions for nearly an hour as he announced his decision not to run for speaker again.
“I believe I can continue to fight, maybe in a different manner,” McCarthy said. “I will not run for speaker again. I’ll have the conference pick somebody else.”
As Breitbart News reported:
The former speaker spoke whimsically at times about his long journey to the speakership and expressed no regrets over the choices he made in the days leading up to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filing the motion to vacate that ended his tenure.
“Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it is necessary,” he said, smiling. “I don’t regret standing up for choosing governing over grievance.”McCarthy lamented the handful of Republicans who voted to end his speakership after less than nine months.
“Unfortunately, four percent of our conference can join all the Democrats and dictate who can be the Republican Speaker in this House.”
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) became acting speaker of the House after McCarthy’s removal. In one of his first acts as acting speaker, McHenry ordered former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to vacate her Capitol hideaway office so he could take over, Politico reported.
“Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed,” an email sent to Pelosi’s office reportedly said.
Pelosi blasted McHenry’s decision, calling it a “sharp departure from tradition.”
“With all of the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting, one of the first actions taken by the new Speaker Pro Tempore was to order me to immediately vacate my office in the Capitol,” Pelosi said in a statement.
“This eviction is a sharp departure from tradition,” she continued. “As Speaker, I gave former Speaker Hastert a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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