Matt Gaetz defeats primary challenger backed by McCarthy revenge tour

Rep. Matt Gaetz, who led the effort to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, beat his primary challenger Aaron Dimmock in Florida Tuesday. Sen. Rick Scott, a former Florida governor, also won his primary. CBS News’ Nikole Killion reports.

With about 72% of the votes counted, Gaetz defeated challenger Aaron Dimmock, a former Navy officer, by a margin of 71% to 28%.

“Kevin McCarthy was motivated by revenge and pettiness and I think some very destructive soul searching,” Gaetz told CBS News in an interview Tuesday. “I’m on my way to the 119th Congress, and he’s on his way to whatever the next stage of grief is.”

In a social media post, Dimmock said it was “was not the result we had hoped for.”

“Running as a first time candidate against a powerful career politician is never easy, but I was honored to have the opportunity to be that alternative,” he wrote.

McCarthy last year became the first person in history to be ousted in a House vote from the speakership after Gaetz moved ahead with a motion to vacate. Joined by all Democrats, just eight Republicans voted to oust McCarthy from the role, but it was enough to remove him from the post. The Republicans cited frustration with his maneuvers to avoid a government shutdown. And a few months later, after a drawn out fight among the GOP to elect a new speaker, the California Republican resigned from the chamber.

But the McCarthy-Gaetz feud didn’t die with McCarthy’s speakership.

Gaetz is seeking to hold onto the Sunshine State’s 1st Congressional District in the Florida panhandle. The primary is the last in a series of challenges that the former speaker has been linked to in the aftermath of his ouster.

“Kevin McCarthy’s PACs spent over $3 million trying to defeat me and they were unsuccessful,” Gaetz said. “So it shows the limits of the corrupt big money in Washington in a place like Northwest Florida where there’s a strong connection between me and my voters.”

Earlier this year, Rep. Bob Good, who joined Gaetz’ effort to oust McCarthy, narrowly lost his primary in Virginia to a McCarthy-aligned challenger. But McCarthy’s other efforts have produced mixed results, with Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina surviving her own McCarthy-backed primary challenge in June. Others who voted to oust the former speaker didn’t seek reelection.

For Gaetz, his was the last on McCarthy’s so-called revenge tour, which has featured an advertisement blitz by a McCarthy-linked group against the Florida Republican, showcasing allegations against him — including that he paid a minor for sex.

The Justice Department last year declined to charge Gaetz after conducting an investigation into alleged sex trafficking, and Gaetz has denied all allegations against him. But in June, the House Ethics Committee, after speaking with over a dozen witnesses and reviewing thousands of pages of documents, said it has found that some of the allegations against Gaetz merit further review.

McCarthy has claimed his ouster was due to Gaetz’s personal grievances with the former speaker, since he allowed the ethics investigation into Gaetz’ alleged conduct to proceed. Gaetz said he doesn’t know when the investigation might be completed and accused McCarthy of trying to “smear” him.

Whatever the reason, their feud was still apparent as recently as the Republican National Convention last month. Gaetz heckled McCarthy during a live interview on the convention floor, saying “if you took that stage, you would get booed off it.” McCarthy continued the interview without engaging with Gaetz, describing the person who orchestrated the effort to oust him as having an “ethics complaint about paying, sleeping with a 17-year-old.”

Still, entering Tuesday, Gaetz, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, was expected to win the GOP nomination and go on to handily win the general election in the solidly red district in November. But the race could be damaging in the long term for Gaetz, who’s widely believed to be courting a 2026 bid for the Florida governor’s mansion.

Gaetz said in a social media post on Monday that he has “no plans to run for Governor,” saying he likes his current job and wants “to help President Trump in Washington.”

“If those plans change, I hope I have opposition as incompetent as these dorks,” he added.