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Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, had hoped to become the House speaker next year. Instead, Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, will be returning as the minority leader after Democrats seized control of the House.

No small part of the reason for this is that his 14-member California congressional delegation took a shellacking: Democrats picked up six Republican-held seats, out of seven on their target list. The latest Republican setback came Saturday, when The Associated Press declared that Gil Cisneros, a Democrat, had beaten Young Kim, a Republican.

Mr. McCarthy tried to avoid this, directing money to endangered candidates and engineering a voter initiative to repeal the state’s gas tax in a move to draw more Republicans to the polls.

But a big factor in the wipeout may be that Mr. McCarthy forced members of his delegation to, if you will, walk the plank on the Republican tax bill.