House Republicans Launch Quick Campaigns for Leadership Elections Next Week

After a disappointing midterm performance, House Republicans spent Wednesday gearing up for their leadership elections next week, with candidates promising they’ll spend the next two years helping their party reclaim their lost majority.

“I helped build a majority from a deeper hole than this, and I have what it takes to do it again,” California Rep. Kevin McCarthy said in a letter to colleagues. “That is why I have decided to run for Republican Leader and humbly ask for your support.”

McCarthy, the current House GOP No. 2, is not running uncontested for the top Republican post. Freedom Caucus co-founder Jim Jordan wants to be minority leader too, although he does not appear to have the level of support McCarthy does. 

“The president’s got a lot of things done, and we’ve helped with some of that certainly, the regulation reform and the tax cuts, but some of those other big promises we’ve made to the American people we did not get done,” the Ohio Republican said Wednesday in an interview with Hill TV.

“And they’re not seeing the intensity to get those things done that I think we told them we were going to have. And so that’s what this is all about. The minority leader is all about getting us back in the majority so we can accomplish for the American people what they elected us to do,” he said.