The next speaker of the U.S. House could very well hail from California — not Nancy Pelosi’s slice of the Golden State, but the other California, Donald Trump’s California.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy is a son of the Central Valley, a farming and oil-pumping heartland that eagerly embraced the former president. A swath of rural conservatism amid California's progressive politics, it's where residents often feel ostracized, resented and left behind by their liberal neighbors in San Francisco to the north and Los Angeles to the south.
