What Is Kevin McCarthy's Net Worth and Salary?
Kevin McCarthy is an American politician who has a net worth of $300 thousand. As a senior member of Congress, Kevin McCarthy's annual salary was $175,000. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, his salary was $223,500.
According to Kevin's latest financial disclosure, which was given in 2018, at that time his net worth was $223,002. His assets ranged in value from $181,000 to $415,000 at that time and his liabilities ranged from $100,000 to $200,000. His financial disclosure listed two liabilities, a mortgage on his personal home in Bakersfield, California in the range of $50-100k and Department of Education loan in the same range for a dependent child. His peak reported net worth was $300,000, as reported in his 2014 disclosure. As of this writing he is the 270th richest member of the House of Representatives.
Kevin McCarthy is a Republican who served as a member of the California State Assembly from the 32nd district from December 2002 to November 2006. McCarthy then served as the Minority Leader of the California State Assembly from January 2004 to April 2006 and the House Republican Chief Deputy Whip from January 2009 to January 2011. Kevin became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 22nd district in January 2007 and began representing the 23rd district in 2013 and the 20th district in 2023. McCarthy served as House Majority Whip from January 2011 to August 2014 and was the House Majority Leader from August 2014 to January 2019. Kevin was the House Minority Leader from January 2019 to January 2023, and he has also served as chairman of the Young Republican National Federation and the California Young Republicans. In 2010, he published the book "Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders," which he co-wrote with Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan.
McCarthy supported Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, and though he initially said that Trump "bears responsibility" for the insurrection that took place on January 6, 2021, he later said that Trump didn't provoke the attack on the Capital. In February 2021, it was reported that McCarthy and Trump got into a shouting match during the insurrection when Kevin called to ask for help and Donald refused, responding, "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are."
In early 2023, McCarthy made history when he lost the vote for Speaker of the House 14 times before finally being voted in on the 15th ballot in the early hours of January 7th. This was the first time since 1923 that the Speaker of the House has not been elected on the first ballot. On October 3, 2023 he as ousted as speaker.
Early Life
Kevin McCarthy was born Kevin Owen McCarthy on January 26, 1965, in Bakersfield, California. Kevin is the son of homemaker Roberta Palladino and assistant city fire chief Owen McCarthy, and he grew up in a working-class family of Democrats. McCarthy's heritage is Italian on his mother's side and Irish on his father's side. When McCarthy was 21, he opened Kevin O's Deli, and he was inspired to go into public service after experiencing the "redundant and frivolous rules along with tedious paperwork and overburdening taxes" involved with running a small business. He sold the business to pay for college, and in 1989, he graduated from California State University, Bakersfield, with a Bachelor of Science in marketing. In 1994, Kevin earned a Master of Business Administration from the school, and as a college student, he worked for the Kern County Fire Department as a seasonal firefighter and landed an internship with Congressman Bill Thomas.
Kevin McCarthy (Public Domain)
Career
From 1987 to 2002, McCarthy was a staff member at Congressman Bill Thomas' office, and he was Thomas' district director from the late '90s until 2000. In the mid-1990s, Kevin became chairman of the California Young Republicans, and he served as chairman of the Young Republican National Federation from 1999 to 2000. McCarthy was elected a Kern Community College District trustee in 2000 and a California State Assembly member in 2002. In 2006, Bill Thomas retired from the House of Representatives and Kevin won his seat with 70.7% of the vote. After the insurrection in 2021, Thomas went on television to express disappointment in his former protégé repeating Trump's "phony lies" about the 2020 election, and in a 2022 interview with "The New Yorker," Bill stated, "The Kevin McCarthy who is now, at this time, in the House isn't the Kevin McCarthy I worked with. At least from outward appearances. You never know what's inside, really. Kevin basically is whatever you want him to be. He lies. He'll change the lie if necessary. How can anyone trust his word?"
After being elected to the House of Representatives, McCarthy ran unopposed in 2008 and 2010. In subsequent elections, he got 73.2% of the vote against No Party Preference candidate Terry Phillips (2012), 74.8% against Democratic candidate Raul Garcia (2014), 69.2% against Democratic candidate Wendy Reed (2016), 64.3% against Democratic candidate Tatiana Matta (2018), 62.1% against Democratic candidate Kim Mangone (2020), and 67.3% against Democratic candidate Marisa Wood (2022). Kevin served as House Majority Leader from 2014 to 2019 and House Minority Leader from 2019 to 2023, and he has been a member of the Committee on Financial Services, the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, and the Congressional Western Caucus. McCarthy was the House Republican Chief Deputy Whip from 2009 to 2011 and the House Majority Whip from 2011 from 2014, and he began serving on the House Republican steering committee as a freshman congressman.
Republicans narrowly won control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, and the election for Speaker of the House began on January 3, 2023, with 203 House members voting for McCarthy, 212 voting for Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, and 19 voting for other Republicans on the first ballot. Kevin was eventually voted Speaker of the House with 216 votes in the 15th round of voting at 12:37 a.m. on January 7th. This was the first time since 1859 that the vote for Speaker of the House had taken more than nine ballots to elect a winner.
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Personal Life
Kevin married Judy Wages in 1992, and they have two children, Meghan and Connor. McCarthy used to be on the board of the Community Action Partnership of Kern, and he is a supporter of the MLB team the Los Angeles Dodgers. Shortly after Kevin dropped out of the Speaker of the House race in 2015, he was accused of having an affair with married Republican congresswoman Renee Ellmers. A few days before McCarthy dropped out, Representative Walter B. Jones Jr. sent a letter to Republican Conference chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers in which he urged his fellow Republican members of Congress to step aside if they had committed any "misdeeds." McCarthy and Ellmers both denied allegations of an affair.
Real Estate
McCarthy and his wife own a 1,571 square foot home in Bakersfield, California, that was built in 1987. The home includes three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and Kevin and Judy bought the home in 1996. The home's estimated market value was approximately $300,000, and McCarthy's 2019 financial disclosure stated that his mortgage on the house at the time was between $50,001 and $100,000.
