Skip to content

Beyond the Beltway, McCarthy Opines on ‘House of Cards’

Even the actual House majority whip has thoughts about his fictional counterpart in the Netflix TV series “House of Cards.”

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told an audience in Sacramento that watching the propgram, the office occupied by Whip Francis Underwood looked familiar.

“I start watching this show and after the first couple of shows, his office starts to look like my office. There’s this map, right, sitting there. I look over on the wall, he’s got that whip sitting there,” McCarthy said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Underwood, a cold and calculating South Carolina Democrat portrayed by Kevin Spacey, does not resemble McCarthy, which is part of the reason the real Congressman may have agreed to meet with Spacey.

“[Spacey] keeps calling my office and wants to know if I’ll sit down with him. I’m saying no because I know it’s not going to turn out well for me, right?” McCarthy said in California. “Well then they tell me he’s going to play a Democrat. I said, ‘Sure, come on in!”

Throughout the first season of the Netflix show, Underwood gets himself embroiled in one scandal after another in order to achieve his political goals. Oddly enough, Torey Van Oot, the Bee reporter on the case in Sacramento, has written no shortage of Congressional ethics stories herself: she covered the trial of then Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., as an intern for Roll Call.

Recent Stories

Joseph Lieberman, an iconoclast who frustrated the Democratic Party, dies at 82

Officials: Baltimore bridge price tag could be at least $2 billion

Race to House majority runs through the 10 Toss-ups

Kuster will not seek reelection in New Hampshire

Appeals court extends hold on Texas deportation law

Capitol Ink | Unwieldy gavel