‘I always knew him as Kevin.’ In Bakersfield, Speaker McCarthy can only mean good things
To Donald Trump, he was once “My Kevin.” On the left, he’s Trump’s stooge. One of his hard-right antagonists in the House Republican Caucus says some members would rather be waterboarded by Liz Cheney than vote for him to be the next Speaker.
But in Bakersfield, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a politician who never got too big for his hometown, who still orders the red sauce and beans at Luigi’s, the Italian deli in the city’s Basque Triangle, and volunteers at the homeless mission.
“I always knew him as Kevin,” said Carlos Baldovinos, executive director of the Mission at Kern County, which serves hundreds of unhoused men, women, and children.
“I see him come down and serve meals during Christmas. He comes down with no security detail, just with a truck, with a ball cap on and jeans, just to drop off clothes … that’s the person that I know,” Baldovinos said, calling McCarthy, 57, and wife, Judy, “all around good people.”
Earlier this week House Republicans, who have won a narrow majority in the midterm elections, nominated McCarthy to be Speaker. But he remains short of the 218 votes he’ll need to win the post and conservative caucus members, unhappy with the party’s performance Election Day, are not convinced he is the answer.
To many people here, however, the Beltway politicking and grand ambitions are almost irrelevant. The prevailing sentiment is that having a powerful position like Speaker filled by a Bakersfield boy can only mean good things for the struggling city of 400,000.
The American Lung Association found that Bakersfield, surrounded by oil refineries and some of the state’s biggest agricultural operations, has close to the worst air quality in the country. Thousands of residents regularly suffer from valley fever, a fungal infection that comes from breathing in microscopic spores. In all of California, Kern County is ranked fourth in the highest rates of heart disease-related deaths. The statewide homelessness crisis has not spared Bakersfield. It is a city seriously in need of some TLC.
Trump ‘the buffoon’
From a small television mounted on the wall of the bar in Wool Growers, the historic Basque restaurant, former President Donald Trump announces he will run again in 2024. The speech is playing on Fox News in a room largely full of Republicans, but no one seems particularly moved by the red, white, and blue MAGA spectacle on the screen.
In much of D.C., McCarthy embodies the GOP’s toxic fealty to Trump — denouncing him privately after the deadly Capitol insurrection and then traveling to Florida to regain his good graces. Enemies blame him for the red wave that never hit the shore, despite the Republican party flipping the House.
But none of it seems to have compromised him here. For supporters of both men, of whom there are many in Kern County, the acid test is pretty simple: Trump is not great for the party anymore, but McCarthy, re-elected to his ninth term Nov. 8, still is.
“I think the right guy might be DeSantis,” said John Hatten, a business executive who’s lived in Bakersfield for more than 20 years with his wife, Theresa. Both voted for Trump and McCarthy in the last two elections but are sitting with their backs to the televised rally, drinking cocktails and looking at their phones.
“I think it’s selfish of Trump to run,” said Theresa. “He’s just kind of made himself a buffoon in the public eye … and he’s really old. Is there really no handsome 60-year-old who could do this?”
The Hattens, fiscal conservatives more concerned with taxes and inflation than same-sex marriage or abortion, say the quality of life keeps them in Bakersfield.
“Everywhere you go, you know someone,” Theresa said.
And that includes McCarthy, who went to Bakersfield High School with many of the people now running the local businesses he still drops in on. When he’s not in D.C. trying to secure the votes for speakership, he is hosting fundraisers for donors at Luigi’s, or stopping by Dewar’s to satisfy a sweet tooth.
In the 2016 and 2020, Trump carried historically red Kern County with 53% of the vote. McCarthy drew 71% and 64%. And while there are plenty of Republicans in Kern County with “Let’s Go Brandon” signs planted on heir front lawns, loyalty to Trump comes second to the GOP at large, and certainly to McCarthy.
Cathy Abernathy, president of a conservative consulting company whose clients include McCarthy, is another party member less loyal to Trump than the man about whom she says “there’s no better Speaker-in-waiting.”
“You don’t need Trump’s endorsement to get the speakership in the House,” she said on KERN radio the day after the election.
“I think no matter what he says, Kevin will win.”
In a quick interview on 17 News on Tuesday morning, a week after the election, she gushed further.
“He worked harder than anybody [to flip the House],” she said.
Supporters who’ve known McCarthy a long time see his ambitions in a favorable light — as a call to public service, rather than selling out to the former President for a powerful post in Congress.
“I don’t know what goes on in those conversations [in D.C.],” Baldovinos said.
“Ultimately, I believe he wants to serve. He wants to be a public servant. There’s a lot of sacrifice that goes along with that … it’s very simple.”