McCarthy’s path to doom: Four moments that led to Kevin losing his speakership

History was made on Tuesday when eight Republicans voted with House Democrats to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from his role as House speaker, which he served for nine months. However, the motion to vacate and the support it garnered was foreshadowed throughout the California Republican’s speakership.

When McCarthy secured the speaker’s gavel in January after a series of votes, the road ahead promised to be difficult.

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Here are four moments that led to McCarthy’s removal from the role of House speaker:

Lengthy vote series to secure gavel

In January, the House voted 15 times before McCarthy could lock down the necessary support to become speaker. In the last vote late in the evening of Jan. 6, 2023, he received 216 votes to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-NY) 212 votes.

By the 14th ballot, four lawmakers were still opposed to him, including Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Bob Good (R-VA), and Matt Rosendale (R-MT). All six holdouts voted “present” on the 15th ballot. Between votes, there were several breaks, during which McCarthy and his allies negotiated with GOP defectors to gain their support.

Motion to vacate rule change

However, the support of various members or their willingness to vote “present” rather than against McCarthy came at a cost. The former speaker had to make significant promises and concessions to make his dream a reality.

One of the biggest concessions the California Republican made, lowering the threshold of member support required to trigger a vote on a motion to vacate, would eventually be his undoing.

Thin majority and rebellious conference members

Two handicaps of McCarthy’s speakership were the razor-thin majority of the House Republicans and a group of hard-line members who were made all the more powerful because of it. Following the 2022 midterm elections, the Republicans enjoyed a slim 222-seat majority to the Democrats’ 213 seats.

This would require a unified GOP conference to get measures passed in the House. Realizing their power in this dynamic, members of the conservative Freedom Caucus took opportunities throughout McCarthy’s tenure to hold out on supporting bills that didn’t address their priorities, such as cutting spending levels or dealing with the border crisis.

Debt ceiling deal with Biden and Democrats

As McCarthy was forced to make promises to the hard-line members of his conference in exchange for their support on key measures, he also had to make a deal with Democratic President Joe Biden when it came to the debt ceiling and avoiding a historic debt default.

The speaker couldn’t reconcile the promises he made during the speaker vote with Biden’s asks. Instead of reductions in spending to pre-COVID-19 levels, which was the request of many conservative conference members, McCarthy and Biden agreed to keep spending flat for fiscal 2024.

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Patience with McCarthy among the hard-line group of Republicans was at an all-time low when it came time to address appropriations. Already feeling that the speaker had abandoned promises, the group was particularly unhappy that appropriations bills were not being passed in regular order and that a continuing resolution became necessary to avoid a government shutdown.

After McCarthy put forth a stopgap measure that secured enough votes from Democrats to pass and avert a government shutdown, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) pledged to introduce a motion to vacate against McCarthy. The Florida Republican was able to secure seven other votes from his fellow Republican members, as well as the support of the House Democrats, to remove McCarthy on Tuesday evening.