Far-Right Republicans Face Tough Races in Swing Districts, Testing McCarthy

WASHINGTON — As the midterm election season enters a critical final phase, some far-right Republicans are facing headwinds in congressional races that once appeared to be prime opportunities for the party to win seats, complicating the plans of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader who aspires to be speaker, and fueling Democratic hopes of cutting their losses in their fight to retain control of the House.

Some of the candidates have risen despite the efforts of Mr. McCarthy, the California Republican who spent freely to defeat them in primaries and toiled to strike a balance between courting the mainstream and making peace with the ascendant extremists in his party’s ranks. Mr. McCarthy now faces possible losses in competitive districts — or the prospect of adding to the list of hard-right lawmakers in his conference who may be difficult to control if he becomes the House speaker next year.

The situation underscores the growing influence of extremists styling themselves in the image of former President Donald J. Trump, and how the Republican Party’s core supporters continue to gravitate to such figures.

“The story of the last seven years is Kevin McCarthy slowly realizing they’ve lost control of the party that is now dominated by Trump and the voters who love him and love candidates like him,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican political strategist. “Trump controls the base, but the base is large enough to dictate the outcomes of primaries.”

In New Hampshire, recent polling has shown the unpopularity of Karoline Leavitt, the 25-year-old ultra-MAGA challenger to Representative Chris Pappas, a Democrat. In a Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll conducted late last month, only 39 percent of voters had a favorable view of Ms. Leavitt, who has repeated Mr. Trump’s election lies, compared with 45 percent who regarded her negatively. Recent polls showed her trailing Mr. Pappas by 8 percentage points, although an AARP New Hampshire poll released last week showed the race to be neck-and-neck.

A super PAC aligned with Mr. McCarthy spent $1.3 million to back Matt Mowers, a former Trump administration official, over Ms. Leavitt, and an additional $1 million during the primary attacking Mr. Pappas. Since winning the primary, Ms. Leavitt has not tacked to the middle, appearing on “War Room,” the podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, two days after her victory.

In North Carolina, the McCarthy-affiliated group spent nearly $600,000 to try to stop the nomination of Sandy Smith, a self-described entrepreneur and farmer who has proudly admitted that she marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But Ms. Smith won the primary, prompting political prognosticators to rate her district in North Carolina, which had previously trended only slightly toward Democrats, more decisively blue.

In central New York, Mr. McCarthy poured $1 million into the campaign of Steve Wells, a former criminal prosecutor and businessman who was more of a known quantity, over Brandon Williams. Mr. Williams had called the overturning of Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court decision that had established abortion rights in 1973 — a “monumental victory” and suggested that there were instances when a woman’s life should be sacrificed to deliver her unborn child.

Mr. Williams is ahead in most general election polling, but the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections, still rates the race a tossup. Mr. McCarthy and the super PAC he is aligned with, the Congressional Leadership Fund, are now fully behind Mr. Williams.

When Republicans have bemoaned issues with “candidate quality,” they have mostly been talking about Senate races, where the influence of Mr. Trump helped contribute to a roster of candidates that has struggled in competitive races. In the House, Republicans have prided themselves on entering the general election with a diverse set of candidates that includes people of color, veterans and women, and on quietly thwarting the ascendance of some far-right candidates who leaders feared would alienate independent voters and cause problems if elected.

Those efforts were led in large part by the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is competing in 53 races across the country.

But the contests in which the minority leader and other top Republicans failed to block more incendiary candidates reflect the enduring influence of the far right and the challenge that Mr. McCarthy is likely to face should he succeed in winning back the majority. In a very narrow battlefield, even a handful of losses could make the difference between an operational majority and an utterly dysfunctional House.

“The House majority will be won district by district, and running with the weakest and most extreme candidates in swing districts will cost the G.O.P.,” said Tommy Garcia, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Mr. Mowers, who lost his primary to Ms. Leavitt, defended Mr. McCarthy’s track record and said it would not hurt Republicans’ chances at taking the House.

“No one can bat a thousand,” he said. “And while a few candidates from outside the mainstream have emerged that will have challenges winning a general election, the playing field is more than wide enough to recapture a majority.”

In a few cases, the candidate whom Mr. McCarthy failed to defeat is thriving, and the outcome of the primary might not affect Republicans’ chances in the general election. Recent public polls have shown Mr. Williams, for instance, ahead of Francis Conole, the Democrat competing for an open seat in a competitive district in upstate New York.

Mr. McCarthy’s super PAC often spends in places where its favored candidate is struggling, so it is not surprising that even with the outside boost of funds, some of those candidates still lost. Overall, the Congressional Leadership Fund sees its primary spending as a success story. The group 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, the organization’s president. “Candidate quality matters, and proactively engaging put us in a dramatically better position not to just win the majority, but to elect stars that will be the future of the party.”

But elsewhere across the country, right-wing candidates whom Mr. McCarthy tried to knock out have prevailed, bolstering Democrats’ chances of winning a seat.

In Arizona, Kelly Cooper, who has refused to acknowledge the 2020 election results and called for the immediate release of people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, defeated Tanya Wheeless, the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant whom Mr. McCarthy’s PAC endorsed and helped fund.

In the Third Congressional District in Washington, a group aligned with Mr. McCarthy, Take Back the House 2022, donated to Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, who was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. But she was defeated in her primary by Joe Kent, who has said he would oppose Mr. McCarthy for the speakership if elected.

Ms. Leavitt initially said she would back Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a hard-right Republican, over Mr. McCarthy for speaker; she has since changed her position and said she would support Mr. McCarthy.

“They’ve struggled to paint true Trump believers in a negative light, because that’s where the base is, particularly in the South,” said David Wasserman, an election expert with the Cook Political Report. “They have to find other ways to try and disqualify these candidates.”

Then there are the races that Mr. McCarthy stayed out of, where extreme candidates have prevailed and are now imperiling the party’s chances. In Ohio, J.R. Majewski, a Trump-backed Air Force veteran who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and has expressed sympathy for QAnon conspiracy theorists, emerged as the surprise winner from a primary in which the Congressional Leadership Fund did not back any candidate.

Mr. McCarthy then embraced Mr. Majewski, campaigning with him in the state, where he declared, “We have a candidate that understands what Ohio needs.”

Mr. Majewski’s candidacy has since been buffeted by accusations that he lied about his military service, undercutting his challenge to longtime Representative Marcy Kaptur. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s campaign arm, canceled about $1 million in advertisements to help his campaign.

In the general election, Mr. McCarthy has embraced the entire gamut of Republican candidates, striving to avoid appearing as though he is trying to purge the party of its Trumpist wing. He is now vocally backing Ms. Leavitt, and the National Republican Congressional Committee praised Ms. Smith after her victory.

That mirrors Mr. McCarthy’s approach in Washington, where he has elevated some of the more extreme members of his conference, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. The minority leader has made room for some of Mr. Trump’s favored elected officials even as he worked to defeat others he viewed as unelectable.

“He’s living in a space where he has to conduct two parallel realities,” Ms. Longwell said. “He can say, ‘I’m knocking out some of these really crazy characters that are making us look bad,’ and he’s playing ball with some of Trump’s people.”

Rachel Shorey contributed reporting from Washington.