“Nobody can beat a thousand,” he said. “And while a few non-mainstream candidates have emerged who will struggle to win a general election, the playing field is more than wide enough to recapture a majority.”
In a few cases, the candidate Mr. McCarthy failed to defeat is on the rise, and the outcome of the primary may not affect Republicans’ chances in the general election. Recent public polls showed Mr. Williams, for example, ahead of Francis Conole, the Democrat vying for an open seat in a competitive upstate New York district.
Mr. McCarthy’s super PAC often spends in places where his favorite candidate struggles, so it’s no surprise that even with increased outside funding, some of those candidates have still lost out. Overall, the Congressional Leadership Fund considers its primary spending a success. The group has helped several Republican incumbents fend off challenges from more extreme candidates in competitive districts, including Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania, David Valadao and Young Kim in California, and Andrew Garbarino in New York.
“By recruiting strong candidates and supporting them through their primaries, we were able to make our own luck,” said Dan Conston, president of the organization. “The quality of candidates matters and proactive engagement puts us in a considerably better position to not only win a majority, but to elect stars who will be the future of the party.”
But elsewhere in the country, the right-wing candidates Mr. McCarthy tried to weed out prevailed, bolstering the Democrats’ chances of winning a seat.
In Arizona, Kelly Cooper, who refused to recognize the 2020 election results and called for the immediate release of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, defeated Tanya Wheeless, the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant whom Mr. McCarthy’s PAC endorsed and aided. funds.
In Washington’s Third Congressional District, a McCarthy-aligned group, Take Back the House 2022, donated to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. But she was beaten in her primary by Joe Kent, who said he would oppose Mr McCarthy for the presidency if elected.