Rep. Tom MacArthur quits as leader of moderate Tuesday Group after effort on Obamacare repeal

Rep. Tom MacArthur's efforts to broker an agreement that led to House passage of a health insurance overhaul riled enough of his colleagues in a moderate caucus that he stepped down Tuesday as their co-chairman.

"I realized through the health care debates that people in my group wanted different things. They had a very different view of governing," MacArthur told reporters during a House vote Tuesday.

MacArthur became co-chairman of the Tuesday Group at the beginning of this year. A former insurance executive now in his second term in the House, he was the first New Jersey Republican to support House leaders' bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

After opposition within the GOP led to the bill being pulled from consideration in March, MacArthur continued to work on changes. An amendment he helped craft brought members of the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus to support the bill, but also meant that if the bill failed, blame would be placed on those in the Tuesday Group who opposed it.

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Members of the Tuesday Group in the past had criticized conservative efforts to force ideological votes that had no chance of passing the Senate, and MacArthur came under fire within the group.

Earlier this month, he denied a report that he had been given an ultimatum to either resign or face a vote over his leadership. He said Tuesday his decision to step down came after several weeks of consideration.

"You can't lead people where they don't want to go and I'm going to continue to do what I've done," he said, noting he would remain in the group. "I'm going to continue to engage with the Freedom Caucus, I'm going to continue to engage with everyone. And that's going to continue to bother some people."

MacArthur said he was not "pressured" to resign and stressed he always made clear he was negotiating on his own behalf and not the group's.

"There's certainly be a small number who have continued to express unhappiness," he said. "But to actually remove one of our chairs, we'd have to have a whole election. It's not that I saw that coming. I just felt that this was best for me and for the group."

Rep. Leonard Lance, a fellow New Jersey Republican who is a part of the Tuesday Group and opposed the insurance bill, declined to give any details about MacArthur's resignation.

"Tom is a friend and a valued member of the Tuesday Group," Lance said, four times, in response to different questions about MacArthur's resignation.

House Democrats focusing on retaking the House in 2018 have said they would target Lance and MacArthur for defeat, and the party's campaign arm seized on the resignation.

“Representative MacArthur has shown a disturbing lack of regard for the families of his district," said Evan Lukaske, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Coupled with his partnership with the far-right Freedom Caucus, MacArthur’s removal as co-chair of the Tuesday group should finally put to bed the myth of MacArthur as anything other than a right-wing ideologue.”