Kevin McCarthy is officially leaving Congress.

The ousted speaker is resigning from the House at the end of the year, according to an op-ed he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, concluding a nearly two-decade congressional career long-marked by his open aspirations to the chamber’s top spot, only to lose it after nine turbulent months.

“I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year to serve America in new ways. I know my work is only getting started,” McCarthy wrote.

The California Republican became the first speaker in history to get ejected from the position, thanks to eight GOP lawmakers who linked arms with House Democrats. Few expected him to stay in the House as a rank-and-file member for long. Still, McCarthy is expected to remain active in party affairs, including exacting revenge against the Republican critics who helped torpedo his short-lived speakership.

He confirmed he’d still be politically involved in the op-ed, writing that he plans to help recruit the “country’s best and brightest to run for elected office.” He also noted he is “committed to lending my experience to support the next generation of leaders.”

There have been tension points as he remained in the House, with some members suspicious that he had meddled in the nasty, three-week-long search for his replacement. Since Speaker Mike Johnson was elected, McCarthy has remained mostly uninvolved in leadership.

POLITICO first reported in early October that McCarthy was strongly entertaining leaving Congress after the House GOP picked Johnson as his successor. The former GOP leader denied it at the time, saying he would run for reelection.

He is slated to have a party in his honor on Dec. 13 — hosted by House GOP leadership — thanking him for his help delivering the House majority to Republicans.

His retirement will also kick off a race for his Bakersfield-based district seat, which is solidly red. And there are plenty of ambitious GOP politicians eager for a rare shot at a safe seat.

Even before McCarthy announced his plans, Central Valley political insiders were circulating a list of more than a dozen possible contenders. Among them are several state legislators from the area, including state Sen. Shannon Grove and Assembly members Vince Fong and Devon Mathis.

Grove goes way back with the former speaker. McCarthy suggested that she run for the Assembly in 2010, which was her first foray into politics. A former GOP leader in the state Senate, Grove also has fundraising chops. She steered Republican legislators into a rare PR win earlier this year when her bill to designate sex trafficking as a serious crime put Democrats on their heels. (Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom ended up signing the bill with a beaming Grove in attendance.)

Fong, who was McCarthy’s former district director, would appear to be a natural heir apparent, given his close relationship with his former boss. He’s a strong fundraiser who has pulled in more than $420,000 for his Assembly reelection committee, despite having no declared opponent. Several observers noted that Fong is recently married, however, and may not be as eager for the cross-country gig.

Regardless of whoever wins the seat, Republicans in the area are bracing for a steep decline in Washington clout after losing McCarthy and former Rep. Devin Nunes.

“We had been used to having pretty high-profile leadership,” said Diane Pearce, a Clovis City Council member who has also been viewed as a potential candidate. “The fact we had some high-ranking members of leadership in Washington really helped.”

Democrats are increasingly acknowledging that pairing a bipartisan border deal with new Ukraine aid is unraveling for one major reason: Most in the party never wanted this negotiation in the first place.

While key House factions like the Progressive and Hispanic Caucuses signaled more than a month ago they would oppose any immigration policy changes in a foreign aid bill, Democratic leaders and the rank-and-file in the Senate gave the bipartisan negotiators space to work out a deal. On Wednesday, it will become crystal clear that hasn’t worked out, as the GOP is expected to filibuster President Joe Biden’s foreign aid request because it lacks sufficient border security policies.

And as they assess the wreckage of the flailing negotiations to link the border with Ukraine, many Democrats now believe the talks were not set up to succeed from the beginning. While a growing number of Democrats acknowledge that surging migration at the border demands action, most of the party views the border negotiations demanded by Republicans with disinterest or even scorn.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer derided the Republican border position as “hostage-taking,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the mix of negotiators meant it was “never going to happen” and some House Democrats are calling on Senate leaders to pull the plug entirely.

“They never should have started,” said Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.).

From the beginning, the negotiations were asymmetric. Republicans say border policy changes are the price for Democrats’ getting Ukraine funding. But Democrats believe it’s misleading to argue that Democrats are getting Ukraine funding in exchange for border policies, those lawmakers argue, since Republicans also support aid for Kyiv.

On Wednesday, the frustrations in the Capitol over the impasse will spill out openly on the Senate floor, as the GOP is expected to block advancing President Joe Biden’s $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Schumer had hoped the vote, though he knew it was likely doomed, might unstick the flailing negotiations among six senators on border policy.

And there’s still a chance senators may pick the stalled border policy negotiations back up. Senate Democrats aren’t closing the door but continue to argue the GOP needs to move toward a compromise rather than sticking with pursuing tough asylum, parole and detention policies while. The fact Democrats are airing their problems publicly isn’t a great sign for those talks, however.

Plus, their counterparts across the Capitol aren’t sure even a successful deal can clear Speaker Mike Johnson’s House. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), observed that the House “is so broken that even the must-passes don’t pass.”

“Putting something as complex and needed as immigration reform in a pressure-cooker bill was not smart,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.).

What’s more, Democrats are sick of answering for Republicans’ line in the sand. This week, GOP senators essentially indicated there’s little room to negotiate other than for Democrats to swallow most of their proposed border policies, which fall short of the House GOP’s hardline bill but still go much further than most Democrats are comfortable.

That’s led to a wave of anger over where things stand.

“You can tell that I’m irritated with this, the proposition that Republicans are taking, literally, Europe hostage in exchange for border concessions,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told reporters. “And you guys come to us and say: ‘What are you going to do about the hostage taking?’”

In the House, top progressives are signaling they’re not heartbroken that things are falling apart across the Capitol. They’re comfortable with Biden’s foreign aid request going to a vote, even if it’s a failed one.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Progressive Caucus, said she advised Democratic senators to force the GOP to “make the choice of whether you’re going to give aid to Ukraine at this critical time. But don’t give in to the hostage-taking, the throwing under the bus of immigrants.”

Schumer said Tuesday he would allow Republicans to have an amendment vote on their border proposals if they advanced the bill, but he was quickly rebuffed by GOP leaders, who said they will still mount a filibuster. That proposed amendment vote would come at a 60-vote threshold, which means it would require support from at least 11 Democratic senators — and allow some incumbent Democrats to break from their party with little consequence.

“If they want money for Ukraine and Israel, they’re not going to get it unless they close the border. For them, keeping an open border is more important than the security of Europe or the Middle East. Which is astonishing to me,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said of Democrats.

While privately many Democrats are skeptical the border negotiations will succeed, they feel compelled to try. After all, one of Biden’s top priorities rests on this deal with Republicans. If they actually got an agreement though, Johnson would need Democratic votes to pass it given the sheer number of Ukraine skeptics in the House GOP.

And some progressives argue the Senate is not pursuing a workable solution, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) arguing it sets “a very dangerous precedent to exchange domestic policy for foreign policy.”

Border negotiators like Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) would not necessarily have chosen to pair the two to begin with, due to past failures on immigration and border policy talks. But Senate Democrats say they are playing the hand they’ve been dealt by Republicans, who also have to contend with helping Johnson keep his job.

As Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) observed of the talks: “I never thought they made sense. But I thought they were necessary.”

“You’ve got Republican leaders saying this isn’t a negotiation, this is about putting a gun to the head of Ukraine and getting whatever we want. That’s not the way legislation customarily works,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in an interview.

ALBANY, N.Y. — The battle over the Israel-Hamas war has divided Democrats across the country. Now the tension is set to be on display in a suburban New York House seat.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer will launch a challenge against Rep. Jamaal Bowman on Wednesday in a district with one of the nation’s largest Jewish populations. Latimer is staunchly pro-Israel, and Bowman, a member of the liberal Squad, has largely supported pro-Palestinian stances.

With pro-Israel groups looking to back Latimer, the race is likely to become one of the country’s top battlegrounds for Democratic angst over how full-throated the party’s support for Israel should be.

“Rather than standing with President Biden and the overwhelming pro-Israel Democratic majority, Representative Bowman has aligned with the anti-Israel extremist fringe,” AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann said Tuesday. “Democrats in this district deserve a representative who stands by the mainstream view, which supports the US-Israel relationship.”

The state’s organized left is not taking the challenge lightly.

As Latimer plans run — he filed paperwork Monday to start raising money for a campaign — supporters, including fellow Squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Working Families Party have rolled out a series of early Bowman endorsements.

“It would be a tremendous loss to lose the voice of someone so grounded and so unique in Congress,” state WFP co-director Ana Maria Archila said of Bowman. “There aren’t many people like Bowman who grew up in public housing, who are the children of postal workers, who spent their adult life as teachers and principals, and who actually represent the experiences of working class people because they’ve lived those experiences.”

Latimer will be the most formidable primary challenger against an incumbent member of Congress in New York in modern history. He has been elevated to higher office four times since he was elected to Rye’s City Council in 1987, racking up an 18-0 record while repeatedly running against some of the state’s best-funded Republicans.

And while it’s rare for New York’s party establishment to openly embrace primary challenges against incumbents, Latimer should have strong support from top local Democrats throughout the region.

“If George runs, I will be with him from day one,” said Assemblymember Amy Paulin (D-Scarsdale). “I will be among many.”

He’s also poised to receive the backing of local and national Jewish leaders, who are already criticizing Bowman’s stances on Israel.

AIPAC, for instance, cited a long list of actions outside of the party’s mainline on Israel, including Bowman’s boycott of President Isaac Herzog’s speech to Congress over the summer.

Latimer toured Israel last week, just days before he filed with the FEC.

In an interview with POLITICO when wrapping up that trip, the county executive shared his views on the ongoing hostilities in the region. They were markedly different from those expressed by Bowman, who has been a leading advocate for a ceasefire in recent months.

“You can’t take hostages, keep them, then say ‘OK, let’s negotiate now, let’s be nice, let’s have peace now,’” Latimer said. “It just seems logical to me the first thing you’ve got to do is release hostages.”

Latimer said that Israel would be a “big issue” but “not the whole issue” in a race. He said a run will largely focus on his record of progressive accomplishments.

And he would focus on his willingness to do the kind of “grunt work” that can get bills passed. He would attempt to present himself as a more serious alternative than Bowman — who received a misdemeanor charge for pulling a fire alarm in the Capitol before an October budget vote.

But even if Latimer doesn’t plan to make Israel the main focus of his messaging, it’s clear that others will.

Bowman is already warning of massive AIPAC spending campaign next year.

“Jamaal was one of the first representatives to support a ceasefire,” a Facebook ad from the Bowman campaign that began running on Monday says. “But because of his calls for peace, AIPAC is flooding his district with nasty attack ads. Chip in to keep Jamaal in office, defending our values and pushing to save lives.”

On Tuesday, Bowman deferred comment on the looming race to his campaign, which has not responded to a request for comment.

Bowman is in his second term after defeating longtime Rep. Eliot Engel in 2020 and seemed to solidify his control of the seat when he was handily reelected two years later.

But he started facing more headwinds in recent months for his lack of vigorous support for Israel, and the fire alarm incident didn’t help his standing.

Bowman will also likely be attacked for an issue similar to one that helped him win in 2020 — Engel’s decision to spend more time in Washington than in the district.

“Jamaal Bowman does not represent the congressional district,” Paulin said. “He’s rarely in it, except maybe his house. You never see him at events, you never see him doing anything. Repeatedly, constituents come over to me and talk about how his office does not return their calls.”

There’s also the complexity of redistricting if the state’s highest court orders drawing new lines.

Bowman’s district currently includes the northernmost tip of the Bronx and the southern half of Westchester County, including places like Yonkers, White Plains and New Rochelle.

But the lines could change in a bid to help Democrats farther north — where Republican first-term Rep. Mike Lawler is seeking a second term in 2024. An attempt to add more Democrats to Lawler’s district could result in the addition of towns in places like northern Westchester to the Bowman district, which would have the effect of making it a bit more moderate.

Whatever the district looks like, it’s clear that issues surrounding Israel will be at the forefront.

“As the eighth-largest Jewish community in the country, it’s vital that Westchester has a congressperson who fully represents our interests to the U.S. government,” said Rabbi Howard Goldsmith of Rye’s Congregation Emanu-El, who was one of 26 rabbis who publicly urged Latimer to run in October.

Emily Ngo and Katelyn Cordero contributed to this report.