As House Republicans continue to flail in their attempts to elect a House Speaker, the conservative group Club for Growth has agreed to a deal with an independent super PAC aligned with Kevin McCarthy not to spend resources on candidates in some open seat primary races as a concession to the small group of GOP lawmakers who are denying McCarthy the speakership.
The Club for Growth said the organization would support McCarthy for speaker provided that the Congressional Leadership Fund does not invest in primaries in those open and “safe” Republican districts.
In an interview with Meet the Press NOW, Club for Growth President David McIntosh would not say the group is fully supporting McCarthy or making calls to help the cause behind the scenes, but called the agreement a "win-win" for both sides.
“It’s practical,” McIntosh said. “Their mission (The Congressional Leadership Fund) is to get a majority of Republicans elected. Our mission (The Club For Growth) is to get conservatives elected into those seats. If we come up against each other, we spend a lot of money in the primaries that Republicans would want to have in the general election to try to expand the majority. So I look at it as a win-win arrangement. It’s an understanding we both have as super-PACs about how we want to approach the next election.”
But it's not clear how much impact this agreement could have on primary races. A review of CLF's spending since 2012 found just two instances where the group spent ahead of a primary in solidly Republican open seats. Both of those races took place in the 2022 midterms, with the group spending to support GOP Reps.-elect Morgan Luttrell in Texas' 8th District and Wesley Hunt in Texas' 38th District.
The agreement also did not move any votes towards McCarthy, with the same bloc of 20 Republicans continuing to support other candidates for speaker on Thursday.
Moderate Republicans continue to voice frustrations with their House Freedom Caucus colleagues saying their refusal to vote for McCarthy is deterring from the start of the legislative agenda.
Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., a McCarthy supporter and lead voice on agriculture and transportation subcommittees, says what’s happening on the House floor is mostly performative but a necessary argument that would have boiled over anyways.
“This is not a good look. I know that. But at some point we’re going to land the plane,” Johnson said on Meet the Press NOW, “And I actually think that Republicans, if we don’t figure this out in month one we’re going to have this tragedy repeating week after week. Let’s just figure out how to work with each other right now. …There are conversations that are happening between legitimate, moderate Republicans from swing districts and ultra-conservatives from Trump-50 districts that would never have happened if not for this admittedly chaotic odd period before we elect a speaker.”
