'I might wind up in the broom closet': Why Eli Crane defied Kevin McCarthy.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., was still weeks away from being sworn in to Congress for the first time when former President Donald Trump called to try to persuade him to support Kevin McCarthy for speaker.
On the December call with Trump, Crane said he had told the former president, “Sir, I’m sorry, we love you out in Arizona, but I’ve been listening to my voters.” But Crane said his unshakable opposition was more reflective of his military background, which taught him to tough things out.Still, it was a stunning way to enter Congress, where Crane was still getting lost in the hallways while also being one of a handful of holdouts who stood between McCarthy and the speakership.
Before entering politics, Crane served five wartime deployments and 13 years in the military. He then started Bottle Breacher, a company featured on the reality show “Shark Tank,” whose signature product was a .50-caliber bullet fashioned into a bottle opener and marketed as a gift for men and groomsmen. He became a brand ambassador for Sig Sauer, the firearms manufacturer.
“Everybody was pressuring,” Crane said. As the group of defectors shrank from 20 to four, he said, “the pressure just kept escalating.”
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