Whether Pelosi or McCarthy, California Rules the House

 House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) remains the favorite to win the race for Speaker of the House when elections are held this week — hoping to take over from another Californian, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

In fact, what is most striking about this week’s contest as the new Congress takes office — with a narrow GOP majority in the House, holding just 222 seats to Democrats’ 213 — is that California will likely remain on top.

That is partly a function of the fact that California has the most congressional seats, with 52 — even after one was deducted after the 2020 Census. But even holding about 12% of the seats does not guarantee the gavel.

The anomaly of a Californian holding power is also interesting given the fact that the state is arguably America’s most left-wing jurisdiction. Several other “blue” states come close, but California is still the most extreme. On January 1, a slew of new radical laws came into effect, including one making the state a “sanctuary” for child gender-reassignment drugs and surgery. California Democrats take pride in leading the nation’s political left.

Pelosi represents San Francisco, the most left-wing part of the most left-wing state. There is no way in which she or her constituents can be said to represent the nation as a whole. Moreover, while her city is among the richest in the U.S., it is also the most dysfunctional. The “sewer geysers” that erupted this week during heavy rains are a symbol for the city’s failures. To critics, San Francisco is the example of left-wing policy catastrophe.

McCarthy represents parts of Kern and Tulare counties, the part of California that is most like the rest of the United States. It is an oil-producing region, driven by working-class residents and with an increasingly diverse population. But as a California Republican, McCarthy is essentially powerless in his own state. There is no way in which his political home represents the party as a whole. It has not achieved anything in several decades.

Regardless, the apparent continuity between Pelosi and McCarthy reveals that California will still have an outsized role in American governance — just as it still occupies a central place in the American imagination.