Members of the Congressional Black Caucus bid adieu to former House Speaker U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., after he announced that his last day in office would be Dec. 31.
“It’s just interesting, he went from speaker to being vacated, to saying he was going to run for reelection to now resigning,” said U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.
“I wish him well. Godspeed,” he told theGrio. “Peace and love to Kevin McCarthy, but we got work to do in our own communities.”
U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., told theGrio, “I’m surprised he waited this long.”
On Tuesday, McCarthy formally submitted his two-week notice of resignation to the U.S. House of Representatives.
He called his time in Congress “the honor of a lifetime.” And despite leaving office, McCarthy plans to continue mentoring future congressional candidates.
His resignation came just months after he made history as the first House speaker to be ousted from his position.
Now that the conservative lawmaker is stepping down, Congressman Bowman, a member of the House Progressive Caucus, said he finds it interesting that McCarthy “recently made a comment where he acknowledged that the Democratic Party is more representative of the country than his party.”
“That indicates that he was playing the role of an actor as [House] speaker and as a member of the party,” he explained, “as opposed to really uplifting what America should be — which is a democracy that works for all people.”
Kamlager-Dove, a freshman congresswoman from California, said she is less “concerned” with McCarthy’s resignation and more troubled with who could replace him and other “moderate” Republican members of Congress who vowed not to seek reelection in the 2024 elections.
“The fact that that crazy man with the horn hat who was involved in the coup on Jan. 6 has actually filed to run for Congress scares me to death,” the congressman…
Read the full article here
