Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s revenge tour ended with a whimper on Tuesday night as Florida firebrand Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was easily victorious in his primary election against a well-financed challenger put up by his onetime nemesis.
NBC News reported that Gaetz easily prevailed over Republican challenger Aaron Dimmock, a Navy veteran who was deeply financed by McCarthy in the state’s 1st Congressional District, which covers its northernmost portion as well as the panhandle. An outside group controlled by McCarthy, the Florida Patriots PAC, spent more than $3.5 million on a string of negative TV ads attacking Rep. Gaetz for sowing divisions in Washington, lines which ultimately did not sway Republican voters; with 98% of the vote in Tuesday morning, Gaetz had collected 72.6% to Dimmock’s 27.4%, the outlet reported. In a sign of how weak the challenge became toward the end, the PAC pulled its ads from the airwaves three weeks before the election.
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A series of accusatory ads against Gaetz highlighted a congressional ethics investigation into allegations that he had an intimate relationship with multiple underage women. The congressman has dismissed the ongoing probe as “frivolous.” Other McCarthy foes who prevailed over his challengers include Reps. Nancy Mace (R-NC) and Eli Crane (R-AZ), both of whom joined Gaetz in voting to remove McCarthy as House Speaker last last year. McCarthy claimed one win this cycle, narrowly defeating antagonizer Bob Good (R-VA) in his primary.
McCarthy also got a boost from Trump who released an ad touting his support of the hard-right conservative. He is “a very good person, and he’s a very capable man,” Trump said in a video released by the McCarthy campaign. “You ever watch this guy on television? Like a machine. He’s great. He loves Florida, and he loves the country.” Aware that his campaign to unseat Gaetz was sputtering, McCarthy said he believes the negative messaging will hamper the congressman’s ability to reach higher office someday. “I don’t think he’ll ever be able to run for governor like he wants to,” McCarthy has previously said.
Since vacating his seat in January, McCarthy has become more outspoken about the party that largely shrugged as he left it behind. He traveled to Oxford University where he credited House Democrats with assembling a diverse caucus that he said actually “looks like America” while dinging the mostly white Republican caucus for its homogeny. “When you look at the Democrats, they actually look like America. When I look at my party we look like the most restrictive country club in America,” he told the Oxford Union Society late last year.
During last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the two men nearly came to blows on the floor before bystanders separated them. Gaetz briefly interrupted a live interview McCarthy was giving to ask mockingly whether the RNC and Trump campaigns would allow him to address the thousands of attendees. “What night are you speaking? Are you speaking tonight?” Gaetz said while interrupting McCarthy’s live interview. “Hey, if you took that stage, you would get booed off of it! You would get booed off the stage.”
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(FREE RED HAT: “Impeached. Arrested. Convicted. Shot. Still Standing”)
