Far-right critics vex McCarthy in his Bakersfield district, too

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BAKERSFIELD, Calif. The past of Kevin McCarthy’s representative is deeply rooted in this Central Valley town, far from the glamor and money of the metropolises of its states to the north and south. Bakersfield is where he was born and raised, went to college and ran his first business selling sandwiches out of the back of his uncle’s yogurt shop on Stine Road.

But Mr. McCarthy’s dying present can also be glimpsed here.

The Republican divisions that have stymied Mr. McCarthy’s decade-long ambition to become Speaker of the House have played out both on the national stage in Washington and on a much smaller but equally telling stage in his hometown and his hometown. district. It’s easier to find detractors on his far-right flank than hardline supporters, in what should be friendly ground for the top Republican in California, one of the reddest cities in one of the Bluest states in the country.

Mr McCarthy is still re-elected in the constituency with two-thirds of the vote, but the passionate majority minority has become his Achilles heel, as it has been in the House this week.

I think it’s great that Matt Gaetz has a group up there calling attention to what’s wrong, said William Paulovitz, 78, referring to the incendiary Florida Republican who was one of the far-right rebels blocking Mr. McCarthy’s candidacy for the presidency. Mr. Paulovitz, a retired businessman, sent his representatives back for the presidency to a place that representative knows all too well outside of Luigis, a popular lunch restaurant that has long been part of the tradition of Mr. McCarthy’s Bakersfield.

Mr. Paulovitzs wife, Cathie, 74, a real estate agent, added of Mr. McCarthy, I don’t think he thinks about the people standing here in front of Luigis.

Stemming from a now-defunct oil industry and powerful agribusinesses, Bakersfield has remained a conservative stronghold in a Democratic-ruled state, from the capital city of Sacramento to liberal strongholds in the Los Angeles Basin and San Francisco Bay Area. , whose popular culture and big tech represent everything that many conservatives think is wrong with America. A welcome winter rain settled dust from the Central Valley, but high winds sent tumbleweeds bounding down the city’s wide boulevards.

But the Bakersfield of Mr. McCarthy’s youth in the 1960s and 1970s is not the Bakersfield of today.

The old sandwich counter of Mr. McCarthy, Kevin Os, hidden inside his uncles McCarthys Yogurt is long gone. It has now been replaced by Pollos a La Brasa, a Peruvian restaurant, in a seedy strip mall next to Los Hermanos Market and Young Health Spa, a massage parlour. Talking about Mr. McCarthy’s roots there, Jose Gomez exclaimed, Oh, no way! Mr. Gomez was unloading his delivery of cases of Modelo, Pacifico and Victoria beer on Thursday as Los Hermanos officials recovered from a power outage after an early morning thunderstorm.

Bakersfield and surrounding Kern County are now majority Latino, and Democrats are making inroads. The erosion of white control and the anti-establishment turn of conservatism after the rise of Donald J. Trump helped spark a bitter shift to the right in many places, including Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Angrier weren’t more conservative, said Greg Perrone, chief financial officer of a geothermal energy services company and leader of the Greater Bakersfield Republican Assembly, a conservative activist group.

The organization is Kern County’s answer to the House Freedom Caucus, the far-right Republican group with no formal structure or membership roster that has pursued and undermined Republican leadership since 2015.

Likewise, the Republican Assembly is a loose group with a rudimentary ideology, but one that routinely vexes Mr. McCarthy about minority tyranny, as Mark Salvaggio, a former Bakersfield councilman and politically independent, has put it.

Cathy Abernathy, a longtime Republican consultant in Bakersfield and McCarthy’s ally who guided him through his early years as a congressional intern, equated the group with Republican rebels trying to block his speaking out, calling the two minority groups of a minority of a minority behaving like children with a new babysitter how far can they push?

Republican Assembly members say they are generally aligned with Mr. McCarthy’s ideology, but like his ultraconservative opponents in Washington, they see him as part of the establishment and don’t trust him. Mr. Perrone, the leader of the group, said the congressman had never attended one of his events.

You expect a conservative organization to drop by and say hello, Mr. Perrone said. But the more time you spend in Washington, the more time you spend in Washington.

Mr. McCarthy’s aides did not respond to requests for comment.

Ahead of last year’s nonpartisan primary, he defended his ties to the region. I will always continue to fight for Kern County, Mr. McCarthy told a local television station, KGET-TV. I will always listen. We may not agree 100%, but I will listen to you and tell you directly what we are trying to do and accomplish.

Ken Mettler, former speaker of the California Republican Assembly, the state body the Bakersfield Group is a part of, was practically thrilled with Mr. McCarthy’s struggles in the House. Mr Mettler challenged Mr McCarthy in the primary in 2016 and won 13% of the vote. Since then, he has been shooting his deputy.

Mr. Mettler uses the same language as Mr. McCarthy’s biggest Republican detractors in the House: a merry man on the outside but a henchman behind the scenes; a creature from Washington who spent his time building his own power base instead of parties.

For Mr. Mettler, the public humiliation of Mr. McCarthy for his quest for the speaker hammer is karma.

He spent so much Republican time, money and treasury against Republican members that he was part of the reason there was a moderate red wave in November, Mettler said. But enough Freedom Caucus-type patriots survived that the chickens came home to roost.

Mr. McCarthy was one of three self-proclaimed young guns in the 2010 House Republican leadership, along with Eric Cantor, the former House Majority Leader, and Paul D. Ryan, the former Speaker. The young guns cultivated the Tea Party movement, only for it to eventually backfire, defeating Mr. Cantor, pushing Mr. Ryan into retirement and stalling Mr. McCarthy’s first bid for president in 2015.

After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Mr. McCarthy went to the House floor to hold Mr. Trump guilty for the riot. But he voted against Mr Trump’s impeachment and then, within days, traveled to Mar-a-Lago to make amends with the former president.

If Mr. McCarthy is responsible for anything, it’s a lack of foresight, said David Bynum, a former college intern in Mr. McCarthy’s office who is now a Republican consultant in Bakersfield and a McCarthy supporter. The Republican leader knew he had a problem with his far-right flank after Jan. 6, Mr Bynum said, but did nothing to fix it.

He had a year or two to figure it out, Mr Bynum said. The party had two years to say, Hey, if Kevin can’t walk the line, who can? But no one shows up.

If Mr. McCarthy is ultimately denied the gavel, Mr. Bynum said, he believes Mr. McCarthy will not run again. This, he added, would be a huge loss to the community, but there are not many people knowledgeable enough to realize this.

A Speaker of the House has the ear of the Speaker, regardless of what party that Speaker represents, Ms. Abernathy said. Two large military bases in the district must be protected. The oil industry could use a boost, and California’s water wars have only escalated with a prolonged drought. The West’s giant federal irrigation systems are caught between Central Valley farmers and California environmentalists, the fishing industry and cities.

Mr. McCarthy, always affable, has accumulated a lot of local goodwill. Teo Medrano, 62, called him a pretty cool guy as he headed to Donna Kayes cafe for breakfast. But he said he did not watch the speakers’ confrontation closely.

They’ll make the right decisions for him, he said with a cheerful gesture.

Another sentiment is less charitable: Mr. McCarthy has long since turned to national power and forgotten about Kern County. Mr. Salvaggio, the former alderman, pointed to a veterans outpatient clinic that Mr. McCarthy has been promising Bakersfield for more than a decade and has yet to materialize.

It doesn’t matter who’s in there, said Shawna Kidwell, 42, waiting for a table at Luigis. Politicians are all the same.

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