Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday meets with the House Freedom Caucus and other key rank-and-file conservatives for the most important job interview of his career.
McCarthy and the other two Republican candidates for Speaker of the House — Reps. Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Daniel Webster of Florida — must convince this band of conservatives that they are ready to lead the GOP in a new direction.
It’s an especially critical moment for McCarthy, the Californian who is viewed warily by conservatives skeptical of his ties to outgoing Speaker John Boehner and are upset about his recent gaffe in which the suggested the House’s Benghazi investigation was an attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s political prospects.
For the most part, House Republicans on the right have kept their powder dry and haven’t endorsed anyone in the contest to replace Boehner. Multiple uncommitted Freedom Caucus members tell CNN they want more detail on how the next Speaker will change the way the House operates and commit to a more inclusive process for conservatives to help craft the party’s agenda.
Kansas GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp, one of the organizers of Tuesday’s meeting, told CNN that he believes more candidates will enter the race for speaker, and if that happens, conservatives may want to hold another session to interview them.
More candidates would also further scramble the race, as McCarthy — the current favorite — tries to fend off efforts to keep him below the 218 votes needed to win the job in a full vote of the House of Representatives Oct. 29.
Thursday, Republicans will hold a secret-ballot vote to determine its official nominee. McCarthy’s allies claims he has the votes to win that nomination, but as Boehner learned in January when 25 House Republicans split and backed other candidates, not all House GOP members feel bound to vote for their formal party nominee in a public roll call vote on the floor.
“There are other folks looking at it that haven’t made it public,” Huelskamp said, adding that he believes McCarthy doesn’t have enough votes to win the post on the floor, and he’s not sure whether all three Republicans running for the post combined could assemble 218 votes.
The Freedom Caucus lawmakers will hold a separate meeting after they interview McCarthy, Chaffetz and Webster to decide if they will make an endorsement. Under the group’s own rules, it would take 80% of its membership to approve an endorsement in the race, but even if it doesn’t back a candidate, the group can potentially block McCarthy — or anyone else — from reaching the magic number.
Its members have already indicated McCarthy has an uphill battle with them, given that as Boehner’s No. 2, he represents what they say they don’t want — more of the same.
“A mere reshuffling of current leadership won’t work. That a promotion of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to speaker is being seriously discussed by leadership allies demonstrates how little they have learned from recent events,” Michigan Rep Justin Amash, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, wrote in an op-ed on CNN.com on Sunday.
