Do California Republicans face a tougher 2024 campaign with Mike Johnson as House speaker?

California’s House Republicans have finally gained a speaker, but at what cost in 2024?

Many of the state’s GOP congressional incumbents were already in tough positions headed into next year. The removal of fellow Californian Rep. Kevin McCarthy, their valued fundraiser and political patron, in favor of Rep. Mike Johnson, who devised a legal argument to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, may place them on even more unstable ground.

For Republicans to maintain their slim House majority, they will need to hold the line in California.

But they “are now associated with one of the most far-right elements of MAGA, the MAGA Republican Whig Party,” said GOP consultant Mike Madrid. “And as much as they try to omit that, the Democrats will make sure that that everybody understands that connection.”

All House Republicans supported Johnson in Wednesday’s floor vote, ending three weeks of infighting and dysfunction over a successor to McCarthy, R-Bakersfield. His Oct. 3 ouster was engineered by a small group of ultra-conservative members and Democrats. After the candidacies of three potential replacements (Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Rep. Jim Jordan and GOP Whip Tom Emmer) collapsed, the little-known four-term Louisianan — the least experienced speaker in 140 years — finally emerged as a palatable choice for the hard right and other caucus factions.

“It’s not that Mike Johnson is really fundamentally different than Kevin McCarthy or Donald Trump,” Mike Madrid, a GOP consultant, said. “This is the realization that this isn’t an abstract thing anymore. This is an existential threat to the values that a lot of Republicans — especially women, college-educated women are facing — and they’re saying, ‘I’ve had enough.’”

“You have to remember that the Republicans have done very poorly with their own base in the last three straight election cycles,” he said. “And this is lining up to make it a fourth.”

Who is Mike Johnson?

With war in the Middle East and a mid-November deadline to avert a government shutdown, the urgency of filling the speaker’s chair was mounting by the day.

From the chaos emerged Johnson, 51, with a low public profile but a penchant for highly conservative ideology.

A constitutional law attorney, Johnson argued in the wake of the 2020 election that several states improperly changed their voting laws to ease ballot access in response to the coronavirus pandemic. He asserted that this was unconstitutional and provided House Republicans a reason to reject election results.

He solicited House GOP support to file an amicus brief in a long-shot Texas lawsuit seeking to throw out Electoral College votes from multiple states. He also served as part of the former president’s defense team through two Senate impeachment trials.

As part of the Republican Study Committee, a kind of in-house policy think tank, he supported slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits. Johnson, who identifies as a Christian, said the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting federal abortion rights was “an egregious error.” He is strongly against abortion access, and garners top ratings from nonprofit Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

Last year, he introduced legislation to bar discussion of sexual orientation, gender identity and related subjects at institutions that receive federal funds, mirroring a Florida law. Johnson also opposes gender-affirming care for minors, blasting it and LGBTQ identities at a hearing he held in July.

“Those issues are really working with fewer and fewer Republicans,” Madrid said, “which is why you’re seeing a lot of these nominal districts, especially in Orange County and in Mike Garcia’s district, go back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.”

California Republicans in tough elections

Democrats are already piling onto California Republicans facing close 2024 elections.

“Mike Johnson is Jim Jordan with a sports coat — possibly worse — and he has a new posse of best friends in California ...” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Campaign Committee. “These GOP shills have enabled MAGA extremism every step of the way, and we’ll make sure that voters know that they once again put the far-right before California workers and families.”

Meanwhile California Republicans in tough races put out statements focused less on Johnson and more on returning to work.

Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, without using Johnson’s name, said: “We have a crisis at our southern border, one of our closest allies in the Middle East at war, and a deadline to fund the government in less than 30 days. The House elected a Speaker so we can get back to work on these issues...”

Valadao is one of five GOP incumbents in districts Biden carried in 2020, and is one of seven whose seat is considered at risk. His race leans ever-so-slightly in his favor, election analysts say, with some rating it as a toss-up. Former Assemblyman Rudy Salas, who fell to Valadao last year by a 3% margin, and State Sen. Melissa Hurtado have declared as Democratic challengers.

Also in trouble are Reps. John Duarte, R-Modesto, and Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, whose races are predominantly considered toss-ups. Both represent districts that Biden won.

Duarte, a first-term Republican representing an agriculture-heavy district, won election by fewer than 600 votes in 2022 and faces the same opponent, Democrat Adam Gray, next year.

Garcia has new Democratic challengers after beating out former Assemblywoman Christy Smith last year. Garcia became the first California Republican in two decades to flip a district represented by a Democrat; he won a special election in 2020.

Reps. Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach, and Ken Calvert, R-Corona, also face races that currently lean slightly in their favor, according to analysts. Rep. Young Kim, R-La Habra, has a more secure seat, however he also represents a Biden district. And forecasters note Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, is not guaranteed to win next year.

Losing McCarthy

Losing McCarthy in leadership puts California Republicans in a tough spot. With his formidable fundraising, McCarthy has been a significant source of cash for the state GOP, often using his assets to protect vulnerable incumbents.

Through PACs associated with McCarthy and his own campaign committee, he has steered about $4.8 million this year to the campaigns of the seven at-risk incumbents, according to a review of Federal Election Commission filings. That makes up a significant portion of their fundraising.

The McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC founded in 2011, and its associated groups have raised about $80 million this election cycle. CLF, which will be controlled by the next speaker, raised about $645 million under McCarthy.

Important too is what Matt Rexroad, another GOP consultant, called the “McCarthy machine.”

“Does [Johnson] have the support of the McCarthy machine in terms of the infrastructure? Will they replace a lot of people at the Congressional Leadership Fund?” Rexroad asked. “All these sorts of things are very secondary but really important: After you elect the speaker, then what do you do after that? Some speakers are better than others in terms of the political operations.”

Their best bet for speaker was McCarthy, said Rexroad. But the path forward for House Republicans under an inexperienced speaker, no matter who, is unclear.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the best thing for the California delegation was to have Kevin McCarthy remain as speaker, but I don’t know,” he said. “There’s obviously going to be some drop off because there was no member of that caucus or organization that was better. But how much this drop off is, I really just don’t know.”