The race to replace ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy kicks off Tuesday: Meet the candidates vying to join the chaos of Congress and expand the slim GOP majority

On Tuesday, California’s 20th District will choose who will replace Kevin McCarthy in a race that will affect the House GOP’s narrow majority.

Nine candidates are vying to replace the former speaker from Bakersfield. All candidates run on the same ballot, regardless of party.

If a candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, they win the special election. If no one breaks this threshold, the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff on May 22.

There are four Republicans on the ballot, led by Vince Fong, who has earned endorsements from McCarthy as well as Donald Trump, and Mike Boudreaux, the Tulare County sheriff and another front-runner.

The Democrats have lined up behind Marisa Wood, who was also their candidate against McCarthy in 2022.

Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s election, the district is guaranteed to be represented by a Republican in the next Congress. In a March 5 primary, both Fong and Bordeaux advanced to the November general election.

Republicans currently hold the narrowest majority in the House: they can only afford to lose two votes and pass party legislation.

Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck announced he will leave Congress next Friday, days after the California race.

McCarthy resigned from Congress in December, two months after he was removed from the speakership. He had represented the district since 2007. He had been in leadership, first as the chief deputy whip, then whip, then majority leader and then GOP leader and speaker since 2009.

The other Republicans on the ballot are Kyle Kirkland and Anna Cohen. The other Democrat is Harmesh Kumar. The remaining three candidates are Ben Dewell, David Fluhart and James Cardoza, all running as ‘no party preference.’

Fong, also from Bakersfield, is a member of the California state assembly and a former aide to McCarthy. But even with a large war chest and the backing of a McCarthy-linked super PAC, he was unable to block Boudreaux from advancing to the March 5 general election.

Boudreaux won his first election for sheriff-coroner in 2014 with nearly 73% of the vote and ran unopposed in 2022 and 2018.

There could be a situation where one of the two men wins the seat for the rest of the year and another takes it over in January.

The November primary had 11 candidates on the ballot, seven of whom were Republicans.

The Central Valley district is reliably Republican — Trump won it by 25 points against Joe Biden in 2020. That same year, McCarthy won re-election over Democrat Kim Mangone by 24 percentage points.

The March 19 special election is expected to have much lower turnout than the March 5 primary without a presidential ticket on the ballot. In the preliminary election, Fong came in first with about 41% of the vote, and Boudreaux came in second with 25%.