House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s affiliated political groups spent millions of dollars electing Republicans who voted to oust him from the speakership on Tuesday. In the last election cycle alone, McCarthy-aligned PACs dropped close to $100,000 supporting the eight members who opposed him.
“A lot of them I helped get elected, so I probably should have picked someone else,” McCarthy said of the Republican detractors on Tuesday evening.
The Majority Committee, McCarthy’s affiliated leadership PAC, contributed to the campaigns of five of the eight Republicans who voted against him. The Majority Committee contributed $10,000 each to the campaigns of Matt Rosendale (R., Mont.), Nancy Mace (R., SC.), and Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.) last election cycle, according to campaign finance records, and gave $5,000 each to Eli Crane (R., Ariz.) and Bob Good (R., Va.)’s campaigns. The Majority Committee also contributed $10,000 each to Victoria Spartz (R., Ind.) Warren Davidson (R., Oh.), who were in favor of voting to vacate McCarthy.
Additionally, Majority Committee contributed $15,000 to the Spartz-affiliated Free Market Fund PAC and $10,000 to the Mace-affiliated Must Act to Create Excellence PAC.
Another McCarthy-affiliated PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, contributed $5,000 to Mace’s campaign and $10,000 to Crane’s in 2022. CLF also spent a whopping $900,000 on advertisements to support Crane in an Arizona battleground race, Politico reported in January, and spent over $1 million backing Spartz’s 2020 campaign. In total, CLF spent $111 million on ads to flip Democratic-held seats when McCarthy was minority leader.
Although his opposition claimed that McCarthy was “working for the Democrats,” the former speaker raised a total of $65.2 million for House Republicans this election cycle, as of July.
“When we won back the House we promised to follow through on our Commitment to America and get our nation back on track. We have kept our word. Our conference is united and changing Congress for the better,” McCarthy told Fox News in March. “Our work represents a new direction and better approach, and the American people are taking notice. I want to thank our supporters for their historic generosity as we begin our mission to expand the House Republican majority in 2024.”
Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), who proposed the motion to vacate, hasn’t received recent campaign contributions from McCarthy-associated PACs.