Rep. Kevin McCarthy
Former Representative for California’s 20th District
pronounced KEH-vin // muh-KAHR-thee
McCarthy was the representative for California’s 20th congressional district and was a Republican. He served from 2023 to 2023.
He was previously the representative for California’s 23rd congressional district as a Republican from 2013 to 2022; and the representative for California’s 22nd congressional district as a Republican from 2007 to 2012.
![Photo of Rep. Kevin McCarthy [R-CA20, 2023-2023]](/static/legislator-photos/412190-200px.jpeg)
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. After the 2020 Presidential Election, President Trump, his advisors and associates, and Republican legislators collaborated in a failed coup to have the election decided by themselves rather than by voters.
McCarthy was among the Republican legislators who participated in this. Shortly after the election, McCarthy joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election. In the case, Republicans proffered lies and a novel legal theory which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, McCarthy voted to omit Arizona and/or Pennsylvania from the counting of presidential electors, which could have altered the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor. In 2022, McCarthy defied a subpoena to testify in the investigation of the January 6th Committee.
In 2023, Trump associates and top advisors pleaded guilty to submitting a fraudulent slate of electors to Congress from Georgia, making false statements about purported widespread fraud in the election, and tampering with voting machines after the election, admitted in civil court to posing as fake electors in Wisconsin, and were convicted of contempt of Congress for withholding documents during its investigation and assaulting police officers at the Capitol. Trump associates and top advisors are also currently facing charges for submitting fraudulent slates of electors to Congress in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Trump himself faces related criminal charges in state court, and a federal investigation which terminated because he won re-election alleged that Trump sought to ignore true vote counts, manufactured fraudulent slates of presidential electors, and used the January 6 riot to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election. Trump was impeached but not convicted in 2021 for incitement of insurrection related to the same events. (He was also impeached but not convicted of using the presidency to solicit the help of a foreign government to benefit his reelection in 2019, and he was convicted in state court in 2024 for falsifying business records to cover up acts that he believed might have hurt him in the 2016 election.) The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups one member of which was convicted of sedition, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
In the days after the January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol which succeeded in halting, for a time, the electoral count that determined the outcome of the presidential election, McCarthy said President Trump “bears responsibility” and urged him to resign ahead of his impeachment for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol, and said his behavior was “atrocious and totally wrong,” but he returned to supporting the former president shortly after.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
McCarthy is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 2024 positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills legislators sponsored and cosponsored from Jan. 3, 2019 to Dec. 31, 2024. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
McCarthy was the primary sponsor of 15 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- H.R. 2695 (116th): To rename the Success Dam in Tulare County, California, as the Richard L. Schafer Dam.
- H.R. 5509 (115th): Innovations in Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships Act
- H.R. 6888 (115th): Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018
- H.R. 1988 (115th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1730 18th Street in Bakersfield, California, as the “Merle Haggard Post Office Building”.
- H.R. 1989 (115th): VET TEC Act
- H.R. 39 (115th): TALENT Act of 2017
- H.R. 6007 (114th): To amend title 49, United States Code, to include consideration of certain impacts on commercial space launch and reentry activities in a navigable airspace analysis, and for …
Does 15 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
McCarthy sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
International Affairs (19%) Armed Forces and National Security (19%) Health (12%) Social Welfare (12%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (12%) Environmental Protection (12%) Water Resources Development (12%)
Recently Introduced Bills
McCarthy recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 6718 (118th): City of Ridgecrest Land Exchange Act
- H.R. 6068 (118th): Clergy Act
- H.R. 5617 (118th): Space Transformation And Reliability Act
- H.Res. 593 (118th): Authorizing video recording in the House Chamber during a joint meeting of …
- H.Res. 523 (118th): Authorizing video recording in the House Chamber during a joint meeting of …
- H.R. 2989 (118th): Save Our Sequoias Act
- H.Res. 328 (118th): Authorizing video recording in the House Chamber during a joint meeting of …
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2007 to Dec 2023, McCarthy missed 286 of 11,298 roll call votes, which is 2.5%. This is on par with the median of 2.2% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Dec 2023. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absences, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
