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Kevin McCarthy isn’t done fighting Matt Gaetz [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2024-05-08  

Former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is endorsing Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz’s primary challenger, former naval pilot Aaron Dimmock.

“Gaetz is the Hunter Biden of the Republican Party,” McCarthy said in an interview with Politico. “He’s got an opponent who is pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, trained at Pensacola, went to the Naval Academy, and flew jets to defend us while Gaetz was getting kicked out of high school, buying coke, and paying minors for sex.”

McCarthy is alluding to the ongoing House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, after reports alleged he was involved in illegal and somewhat salacious activities with his former associate Joel Greenberg. Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years for sex trafficking and other crimes in 2022.

There is no love lost between McCarthy and Gaetz, after he waged a successful campaign to get the speaker ousted last year. The Daily Beast reported that Gaetz told people privately that he was campaigning to oust McCarthy as payback for the ethics probe.

”I’ll give you the truth why I’m not speaker. It’s because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old,” McCarthy said in a recent interview.

Dimmock was a last-minute entry as a Republican primary challenger to Gaetz, filing just hours before the deadline a couple of weeks ago. The New York Times noted, Dimmock’s campaign committee treasurer is also the treasurer for the American Patriots PAC, which was used by McCarthy in 2022. McCarthy also admitted to Politico that he “played a role” in vetting Dimmock.

Gaetz isn’t a well-liked person outside of his deeply red district in Florida, having spent a lot of the past couple of years attacking his own political party instead of those across the aisle. He even fundraises off of how much other Republicans hate him.

This primary season is no different, as Gaetz and other Republicans have traded crass barbs and gotten into name-calling spats over current House Speaker Mike Johnson. Not to mention, Gaetz openly attacked his entire caucus in his speech during the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year.

Navigator collects, analyzes, and distributes real data on progressive messaging. The Hub Project's Bryan Bennett and Gabriela Parra talk with Kerry about what they are seeing in their research this election cycle, and which messaging can help progressive candidates win elections in 2024—and beyond.

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