Rep. Kevin McCarthy unexpectedly drops bid for House speaker

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif. gestures toward outgoing House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio during a new conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015. McCarthy, who was expected to become Boehner’s successor as speaker, took himself out of the running Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015, in face of conservative opposition within GOP ranks. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) less House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif. gestures toward outgoing House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio during a new conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015. McCarthy, who was ... more Photo: Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press Photo: Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Rep. Kevin McCarthy unexpectedly drops bid for House speaker 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON — Bakersfield Republican Kevin McCarthy stunned Washington and left some of his colleagues weeping Thursday when the House majority leader took himself out of the running to become the next speaker.

McCarthy’s bombshell announcement came during a closed-door session of Republicans that originally was intended as his coronation until he ran into opposition from the conservative Tea Party faction of his party.

Republicans poured from the Longworth Building hearing room where meeting took place bewildered about where House Republicans will turn next for leadership, and how they can united the Tea Party faction with the broader body of the House GOP caucus.

Even McCarthy’s closest friends and allies said they were stunned by McCarthy’s resignation from the leadership race.

In what may have been a hint of what was about to ensue, Rep. David Valadao, a freshman from Hanford (Kings County) and McCarthy’s neighboring district, said going into the meeting that he was “obviously excited to have a next-door neighbor and Californian” leading the race for speaker, but only shrugged to indicate he didn’t know when asked whether McCarthy would win the ensuing Republican vote that was to take place inside.

Republicans said McCarthy, 50, had more than 200 votes out of the 247 Republicans in the caucus. But he could not reach the magic 218 majority of the full House needed not only to win election to speaker, but to govern effectively and pass legislation through the House without help from Democrats.

The arithmetic is all the more shocking given that Republicans have their largest majority since Herbert Hoover was president in 1928.

McCarthy faced the prospect that 40 or so members of the Freedom Caucus of House conservatives would refuse to vote for him even in Thursday’s closed-door party vote.

Just over a week ago, McCarthy seemed a shoo-in for the job. But he stumbled badly last week in linking a long-running, Republican-led congressional investigation into the deadly attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, to Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers, all but confessing that the more than $4.5 million investigation was motivated by pure politics.

But Rep. Tom Rooney, R- Fla., who said he was one of the conservatives backing McCarthy, attributed McCarthy’s downfall to conservative talk radio, where McCarthy was widely ridiculed as too moderate and willing to compromise conservative principles. In essence, he was seen as a “Boehner 2.0” version of current Speaker John Boehner, who announced his resignation after it became clear he could not unite the party to prevent a government shutdown.

“Talk radio was telling people to vote for Webster and Jason,” Rooney said, referring to party rebels Daniel Webster of Florida and Jason Chaffetz of Utah, two members of the conservative faction who challenged McCarthy but showed no evidence that they had anywhere near the votes to win.

“I don’t know where we go from here,” Rooney said.

Carolyn Lochhead is the San Francisco Chronicle’s Washingotn correspondent. E-mail: clochhead@sfchronicle.com