WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced Wednesday that he will resign his leadership post at the end of next month, clearing the way for a potentially disruptive Republican shake-up just before midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake.
Cantor informed fellow Republicans of his intentions at a private meeting, then made his public announcement at a news conference less than 24 hours after losing a primary election to David Brat, a little-known and underfunded rival backed by Tea Party groups.
House Republicans set leadership elections for June 19, assuring that any Capitol Hill campaigning will be brief. Speaker John Boehner issued an appeal for cohesiveness at the private meeting Wednesday, where he praised Cantor.
"This is the time for unity, the time for focus," he said in remarks released by his office.
Even before Cantor's announcement, jockeying had broken out among fellow Republicans eager to move up the House leadership ladder -- or establish a foothold on it.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the party whip and third-ranking leader, informed fellow Republicans that he intended to run to succeed Cantor. Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas also made clear his interest, but fellow Texan Jeb Hensarling said he was considering a candidacy, as well, and the state's delegation was working to prevent any intramural competition.
Cantor quickly threw his support behind his "dear friend and colleague," McCarthy.
Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois, the chief deputy whip, and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana quickly jumped into the race to succeed McCarthy if he advances to majority leader.
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the party's 2012 vice presidential candidate, ruled out a leadership race.
Cantor said he will serve out his term and be active this fall for Republican candidates.
"What divides Republicans pales in comparison to what divides us as conservatives from the left and their Democratic" allies, he said.
Lawmakers in both parties said Cantor's defeat and the prospect of a change within the Republican high command probably signal the demise of immigration-legislation efforts along the lines President Barack Obama is seeking. But Obama rejected that notion.
"It's interesting to listen to the pundits and the analysts, and some conventional-wisdom talks, about how the politics of immigration reform seem impossible now," Obama told about 40 donors in a Boston suburb Wednesday evening. "I fundamentally reject that, and I will tell the speaker of the House he needs to reject it."
Cantor, who was elected to Congress in 2000, was appointed to the leadership two years later and then rose steadily to become the second-most powerful Republican in the House. In that post, he was the most powerful Jewish Republican in Congress and was seen as a likely successor to Boehner.
Accused by Tea Party critics of being too accommodating on immigration and other issues and criticized by Democrats for being inflexible, Cantor said he had struck the right balance.
"I think that this town should be about trying to strike common ground," he said.
But one Republican said he feared the effects of Cantor's defeat could be debilitating for the party and the government.
Interviewed on MSNBC, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said he was worried that Cantor's loss might lead to more congressional gridlock. Asked if he thought immigration legislation was dead, he replied, "I'm concerned that Ted Cruz supporters, Rand Paul supporters, are going to use this as an excuse" to shut down the government.
"This is not conservatism to me," King said. "Shutting down the government is not being conservative."
Virginia's congressional delegation warned that Cantor's loss could lead to billions of lost federal aid to the state in coming years.
Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and James Moran, D-Va., have announced they will retire at the end of their terms. Without Cantor as the No. 2 leader, it is improbable that the new House GOP team will replace Wolf or Moran on the House's Appropriations Committee, congressional aides said, leaving Virginia without a seat on the panel for the first time in decades.
"The biggest loser in all of this last night was Virginia," one Virginia Republican said, adding, "This is massive. Virginia does not understand what happened last night."
"You've lost two Appropriations Committee members, and the majority leader, who was seen as the next speaker of the House, was defeated. ... You're not going to have anybody in the room when committee assignments are made."
Until Cantor's defeat Tuesday, no House majority leader had lost re-election back home since the post was created in 1899.
Brat's attack
Brat, a professor at Randolph-Macon College in Richmond, Va., with a doctorate in economics and master's degree in divinity, challenged Cantor as sympathetic to attempts by House leaders to enact the immigration laws that Obama and fellow Democrats are seeking.
Brat characterized Cantor as an influential Washington player who paid attention to his role as a leader rather than voters in Virginia. Brat also made compromise regarding raising the nation's debt limit one of his complaints about Cantor's leadership in Washington.
Relatively low turnout in a congressional primary enabled Brat's motivated allies to outnumber any support that Cantor could claim, with the newcomer defeating the veteran lawmaker by more than 10 percentage points.
In November, Brat will face Democrat Jack Trammell in a solidly Republican Richmond-area district.
Interviewed on MSNBC, Brat declined to spell out any policy specifics. "I'm a Ph.D. in economics, and so you analyze every situation uniquely," he said.
On Wednesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a potential Democratic presidential contender, said Cantor "was defeated by a candidate who basically ran against immigrants."
Other Democrats, underdogs in the struggle for control of the House this fall, sought to cast Brat's win as evidence that the Republican Party and Tea Party groups were one.
"The Republican Party has been completely swallowed by the Tea Party. I mean, any debate over whether the Tea Party controls the Republican Party has ended," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the Democratic national chairman, said on MSNBC.
Meanwhile, Brat's win fired up other candidates from outside the GOP establishment Wednesday.
"Did you see what happened in Virginia?" Mississippi Senate candidate Chris McDaniel said to uproarious cheers at a Republican women's luncheon in his home county.
"The people always matter. It's your government. ... If you'll take it again, just fight for it, you'll win the day."
McDaniel hopes to unseat six-term U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in a June 24 runoff. The state senator led Cochran, in the June 3 primary but fell short of the majority needed to win outright.
"Our people here in Mississippi are awake, and they understand that the only way to change the direction of the country is to change the people who we send to Washington, D.C.," McDaniel said Wednesday, pounding away on his principal argument that Cochran's four decades in Congress make him part of a big-spending, debt-ridden government the nation can no longer afford.
It was a message that other Tea Party-backed candidates challenging incumbent Republicans, buoyed by the results in Virginia, made to voters Wednesday as they sought to capture some of Brat's momentum for themselves.
In Colorado, three of the four Republican candidates for governor celebrated Cantor's defeat in public statements or press releases. Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Bentley Rayburn, challenging four-term GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn in a conservative Colorado Springs district, noted that Cantor had flown to the state last month to raise money for Lamborn.
In a separate statement, he repeated his own views on dealing with illegal aliens: "I do not support amnesty of any kind, and I never have."
Louisiana Senate hopeful Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel, also used immigration to hit at Rep. Bill Cassidy, the GOP establishment's favorite to compete this fall against Democratic incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu. A Maness statement called Cassidy a "Cantor clone on immigration and amnesty."
In Tennessee, Joe Carr, a Tea Party-styled state representative, pointed to Brat's victory and insisted his own bid to defeat incumbent GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander is viable.
"All the money and position in the world doesn't resonate with an electorate that is fed up with a Washington establishment that has abandoned conservative principles," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by David Espo, Andrew Taylor, Alan Fram, Erica Werner, Bill Barrow, Thomas Beaumont, Seanna Adcox, Erik Schelzig, Emily Wagster Pettus, Jim Kuhnhenn and Nicholas Riccardi of The Associated Press; by Spencer S. Hsu of The Washington Post; by Mark Silva, Kathleen Hunter, Derek Wallbank, Michael C. Bender, Greg Giroux, Laura Litvan, James Rowley, Mark Halperin and Dakin Campbell of Bloomberg News; and by Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times.
A Section on 06/12/2014