Republican Kevin McCarthy easily won an internal party election Wednesday to take over the shrunken House GOP caucus, a familiar role for the underestimated scrapper whose top priority will be to protect President Donald Trump's agenda and try to build the party back to retake the majority.
The speaker's gavel long gone, the race for minority leader was McCarthy's to lose, but the Californian's rise was never guaranteed. He's close to Trump, but the president is also friendly with Rep. Jim Jordan, the conservative Freedom Caucus member, and both faced testy colleagues ready to assign blame after the midterm election losses.
In the end, McCarthy pushed past Jordan, 159-43, according to officials familiar with the closed-door voting.
McCarthy "knows what he needs to do," said GOP Whip Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who was gravely wounded in last year's congressional baseball practice shooting and unanimously won the No. 2 spot as minority whip.
"You always look in the mirror and see what you can do better," Scalise said Tuesday. Republicans, he said, "need to do a better job of letting people know what we stand for." Theirs was the marquee contest as senators also chose new leaders, but House Democrats put off until after Thanksgiving the biggest contest, Rep. Nancy Pelosi's bid to return as her party's nominee for speaker.
On the other side of the Capitol, senators chose Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for another term leading Republicans and Chuck Schumer for Democrats in closed-door party elections that lacked the drama of the House contest.
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Both McConnell and Schumer were chosen as leader by acclamation, according to those familiar with the private caucus meetings. McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who expanded GOP ranks in last week's midterm, faced no opponent. Democrats returned Schumer's entire leadership team, despite the failure to capture the majority in the midterms.
Senate Republicans also welcomed the first woman to their leadership team in years, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, as they sought to address the optics of the GOP side of the aisle being dominated by men.
Ernst called her selection to the leadership ranks "a great honor." During a brief photo op in McConnell's Capitol office ahead of voting, McConnell presented his newly elected senators who will take their seats in January.
Among them was Florida's Rick Scott, the Republican governor whose race against incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson remains undecided. McConnell said later he was confident Scott would become the 53rd senator in the GOP majority.
Schumer said Trump is lying about voter fraud in Florida's election and remained confident Nelson would return as Florida's senator, as long as every vote was counted.
"President Trump and Gov. Scott have just lied," Schumer said. "They've said there's fraud when their own Republican officials in Florida have said there's no fraud." Schumer portrayed Senate Democrats as emboldened, despite midterm losses, by an election he characterized as a rejection of the GOP tax cuts and Republican efforts to end the Affordable Care Act.
Even in the minority, Schumer said Senate Democrats will push for the party's broader congressional agenda of lowering health care costs, investing in infrastructure and implementing good government reforms to put a check on the Trump administration, which he called "the most ethically challenged in history."
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