A year ago, it was nearly unthinkable that Eric Cantor would not be returning for his eighth term as the representative from Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. His primary defeat in June sent shockwaves through the halls of Congress and, as Election Day nears, it’s worth recalling the former majority leader’s fate.

Initially, some thought that Cantor’s stance on immigration reform was the cause of his undoing, but polling data did not bear this out. A more likely cause was the perception that he had spent too much time in Washington and lost touch with his constituents back home. In a piece for U.S. News & World Report, GOP strategist Ford O’Connell wrote that Cantor “walked the halls of power instead of the streets of his suburban Richmond district.”

Conservative talk show hosts and Tea Party groups are vowing to do something they’ve never done before: Select the next Speaker of the House.

That’s bad news for Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and other establishment Republicans who are eyeing the top perch in the lower chamber. 

Emboldened by Rep. Eric Cantor’s (Va.) loss in his GOP primary, Tea Party leaders are looking to get one of their own either to replace Boehner or to defeat him after the 2014 elections.

Leadership races have long been popularity contests instead of ideological purity tests. That is changing rapidly.

Leadership elections, with the exception of Speaker, are done via secret ballot.

Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said leadership contests come down to a variety of factors: “Loyalty is measured by a different yardstick in a leadership election. It’s measured by: Did you help out when I was running for office? Did you come and do the fundraisers? Did you do what I needed to stay in power?”

If McCarthy moves up to the No. 2 spot, it doesn’t mean he would remain in that position after the November elections, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt last week.

Read more from Molly K. Hooper and Bob Cusack at The Hill

By week’s end, a colorful cornucopia of pundits, strategists and consummate insiders were all still struggling to get their heads around it: how did an invincible commander of the House Republican elite get smacked down by a little-known college economics professor with virtually little money in the bank?

On the night Eric Cantor lost to David Brat in the Republican primary in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, Twitter was “atwitter” with the fact that Cantor had spent more in steakhouses during the campaign than Brat had spent total.

This served to reinforce the narrative that Cantor was in all those steakhouses fat-catting with his campaign staff while Brat’s hungry advisers were pounding the pavement. But what Cantor really was doing in those steakhouses more accurately explains his loss. He was raising funds – and helping others to raise funds – for fellow Republicans throughout the House of Representatives.

He made time for big-dollar private fundraisers to curry favor with other members of Congress, but hedid not make time for constituent service. He walked the halls of power instead of the streets of his suburban Richmond district. His approach to Brat was to caricature him as an extremist one-issue candidate with scurrilous friends and little idea of what he would do if elected when his constituents wanted to hear what he planned to do to better serve their interests.

And after all, he was the House majority leader. He not only could direct legislation to help his district and state, he could lean on appropriators – many of whose campaigns he had helped fund – to get things done. But it turns out having your congressman in a leadership position doesn’t have the appeal it used to.

Read more from Ford O'Connell at U.S. News & World Report

The shock defeat of Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary in Virginia this week has fueled hopes among Tea Party activists in Tennessee that they can stage a similar upset against Senator Lamar Alexander in August.

But the Cantor loss, while enough to shake Washington and the Republican establishment, may not be a sign of things to come as the Tea Party movement has yet to show this year it can find a consistent winning formula against Republican incumbents.

In Tennessee, Alexander’s challenger - Tea Party state representative Joe Carr – is regarded by many political experts as unqualified for a Senate race and he is trailing by up to 40 points in the polls. He is also up against a lawmaker who is well prepared and a statewide Republican Party that is pushing to thwart the Tea Party.

By contrast, Cantor’s loss has been widely seen as a result of  his over-confidence, neglect of his district and voter anger at someone who had a pivotal leadership role in a gridlocked Congress.

“Lamar Alexander has taken the threat of a primary challenger seriously right from the start," said Republican strategist Ford O'Connell. "He knew he had a target on his back."

Carr's local Tea Party backers argue that Cantor's opponent David Brat did not have national backing or serious funding either.

But Republican strategist O'Connell says a Senate race is far more challenging to win than a House race because of the large distances you need to travel and the many more media markets you need compete in.

Carr is also further hampered by the limited resources of the national conservative groups who can only compete in a few races and need to deliver results to help raise more money, O'Connell said. 

Read more from Nick Carey at Reuters

The upset of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by a Tea Party insurgent has planted terror in the GOP over immigration reform, left California Republicans who favor an overhaul in an isolated position, and put a Central Valley Republican directly in line for the second-highest job in the House.

Cantor's loss will reverberate in California: The contest for his leadership job pits Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, against at least two conservative Texans. Silicon Valley loses an ally in Cantor, who cultivated close ties to the valley's political money. And the party's likely rightward shift on immigration poses dangers to California Republicans in heavily Latino districts.

Immigration reform advocates point to GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham's easy primary victory in South Carolina on Tuesday as evidence that immigration was not necessarily Cantor's undoing. Graham is a longtime backer of immigration reform.

But even Republicans who think the media are overstating immigration's role in Cantor's loss concede that the party will be even more timid on the matter now.

"It's certainly a come-to-Jesus moment for House Republicans in terms of what's going to happen with the prospects for immigration reform between now and the 2014 elections," said Republican strategist Ford O'Connell.

While Cantor had eyes on becoming House speaker, he was disliked not only, as it turns out, by his own constituents, but also by a healthy contingent of his fellow Republicans.

Such is not the case for McCarthy, who stands directly behind Cantor in the leadership hierarchy and will try for the majority leader's job.

"McCarthy is the logical choice" to move into the majority leader post, O'Connell, the Republican strategist, said. "The one thing he has going for him that he's well liked by his House colleagues, and that goes a long way in these fierce leadership battles."

Read more from Carolyn Lochhead and Carla Marinucci at The San Francisco Chronicle 

Rep. Eric Cantor said Wednesday that he will step down as House majority leader at the end of July, after losing a primary election Tuesday, igniting a short, spirited race to fill his post in a vote of the full House GOP next week.

Mr. Cantor lost to tea party-backed challenger David Brat in one of the biggest upsets in recent political history, quashing what had been a steady rise for the 51-year-old and dealing a blow to Virginia Republicans.

Republicans said they expect the House to tilt even more conservative in the wake of Mr. Cantor’s defeat because of the candidates hoping to replace him as majority leader and because of the lessons lawmakers will draw from the Virginia primary.

The contest to replace Mr. Cantor started just hours after the election results were called, with potential candidates reaching out to colleagues to gauge support.

Although Mr. Cantor held an outsized financial advantage, much of his campaign money went to radio and television attack ads, which Mr. Brat accepted as free publicity.

“He ran an air war,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “It wasn’t about the money he spent, but how.”

“Would anybody argue he spent the money wisely based on the expenditures? No,” Mr. O’Connell said.

Mr. Cantor, in his remarks Tuesday evening and Wednesday, sounded simultaneously conciliatory, optimistic and grateful.

“He realized that he might not be done yet,” Mr. O’Connell said. “He can still run for governor. He could still run for a lot of things.”

Read more from By David Sherfinski and S.A. Miller at The Washington Times

Tea Party-backed senators eyeing White House bids in 2016 are encouraged by the victory of an underfunded challenger to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), a grandee of the GOP establishment.

Their glee comes as mainstream Republicans are wringing their hands about what the historic upset means for the future of their party, fretting that it could signal a larger Tea Party uprising.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) argued David Brat’s 11-point win showed that conservative principles can triumph over fundraising might and special-interest backing.

“Do I think that’s going to cause some fear among those vying for the Republican nomination in 2016? Absolutely,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist who worked on Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) 2008 presidential campaign.

Read more from Alexander Bolton at The Hill

Immigration reform: dead. That’s Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, writing in The Wall Street Journal about the topic’s chances in Congress after Cantor’s loss. “The votes have been there for months to pass immigration reform, if House Speaker John Boehner were willing to take legislation to the floor. Now, however, immigration reform is dead for the year – and Republicans killed it.” Manley, a Democrat, is hardly alone in his prediction. “I don’t think you’re going to be hearing anybody else talk about immigration reform anytime soon,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell told the Hill.

Read more from The Wall Street Journal's Market Watch

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor canceled a scheduled speech he was to give Wednesday morning before the National Association of Manufacturers, as policymakers scramble to sort through what his stunning political loss means for the financial sector.

Cantor was expected to discuss a host of conservative policy initiatives at NAM's annual summit, but now he will be replaced by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), according to a source familiar with the matter. No explanation was given by the source.

Cantor lost in a primary election Tuesday night to Tea Party challenger David Brat, an economics professor. His last minute speech cancellation signals a challenge establishment Republican policymakers face in rallying congressional support among Tea Partiers and Democrats on a host of financial services.

NAM has been actively engaged on a number of financial issues and Cantor served as a key congressional ally.

From reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, bipartisan immigration reform, to eliminating taxpayer-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Cantor was able to flex his political muscle in part because many viewed him as a potential successor to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

All of that's out the window now.

Republican strategist Ford O'Connell said that Cantor's Speakership ambitions could have made him a bigger target for the Tea Party.

"The fact that Cantor was one step from the Speaker’s gavel helped put the target more squarely on his back," O'Connell said. "This is upset of the 2014 primary season and an enormous victory for the conservative grassroots. It will certainly serve as a 'come to Jesus' moment for some folks in the GOP with respect to immigration reform."

Still, much of the political world was trying to figure out what Cantor's loss means for policy.

Read more from By Kevin Cirilli at The Hill