- Fong will now serve in Congress for the next seven months.
- He will have the advantage as an incumbent in the November elections for a full term.
Vince Fong, backed by Kevin McCarthy, defeated a Republican challenger to fill the former president’s congressional seat that has been empty since last year.
Fong will now serve in Congress for the next seven months and will have the incumbent’s advantage in the November elections.
It will boost the slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives, which only allows one Republican to defect to pass partisan legislation.
The Bakersfield assemblyman is a former top McCarthy aide who retired in December after being removed from the presidency, a position he worked for his entire career and held for nine months.
McCarthy’s endorsement turned out to be a victory for establishment Republicans over burn-it-all Republicans like Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, who fueled the movement to unseat McCarthy.
Vince Fong, backed by Kevin McCarthy, defeated a Republican challenger to take the former president’s seat in Congress.
Fong, 44, was McCarthy’s district director for more than a decade.
McCarthy had taken over in 2007, following the retirement of his former boss, Rep. Bill Thomas, then chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Fong worked for Thomas alongside McCarthy for a time.
The sheer force of McCarthy’s campaign dollars, fundraisers, consultants and affiliated PACs made the race against local Sheriff Mike Boudreaux not particularly close.
Fong also won the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, with McCarthy’s help, in a district where 47 percent of registered voters are Republicans and 27 percent are Democrats.
Boudreaux acknowledged the forces working against him ahead of the election.
“I’m the underdog,” Boudreaux told a crowd of supporters. “I’m fighting a machine that is so powerful that it is, to say the least, a big challenge.”
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux lost to Fong
“The McCarthy machine is huge,” Boudreaux said, adding that it is “daunting, to say the least” to compete against it.
The two candidates had very similar policy platforms: securing the border, cutting taxes, and working on improving water and energy production for the region.
Fong nearly tripled Boudreaux’s fundraising numbers on May 1: between $1.5 million and $425,000.
McCarthy’s endorsement turned out to be a victory for establishment Republicans over burn-it-all types like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who fueled the movement to unseat McCarthy.
Boudreaux, while not as right-wing as some already in the House Republican conference, was taking on the Bakersfield political machine that has propelled longtime political operatives like Fong and McCarthy and former Rep. Bill Thomas before them.
Smack dab between a McCarthy-linked PAC and Nevada-based Conservatives for American Excellence, a pro-Fong PAC raised nearly a million dollars before the race. Conservatives for American Excellence seeks to galvanize traditional Republicans to counter the anti-establishment Club for Growth and the far-right Freedom Caucus.
The top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to a runoff if neither gets a plurality of votes under California’s system. Fong and Boudreaux were the top two vote-getters in the March special election.
Fong will face Boudreaux again in the November race for the full term.