The speaker pro tempore, Patrick McHenry, who has been presiding over the US House of Representatives for the past two weeks after Kevin McCarthy was ousted, could become the next actual speaker, at least temporarily.
Efforts by Republicans to elect a new speaker have stalled after a top contender, the congressman Jim Jordan, repeatedly failed to get enough votes, leaving the chamber without a leader and sitting largely idle on congressional work for two weeks.
The father of three with a penchant for bow ties was thrown into the spotlight after McCarthy’s ouster, when McHenry slammed a gavel hard enough to go viral. The North Carolina congressman has since “wielded the gavel with extreme care, making no attempts to test the limits of his unusual role”, the Associated Press noted, basically just gaveling in and out quickly.
In the latest idea to resume a semblance of normalcy and allow Congress to pass bills, some want to see McHenry given more power for a while instead of waiting on further rounds of speakership votes. Currently, a temporary speaker’s role is presumed to be more limited than an elected speaker, though the exact abilities of the odd position McHenry occupies have been cause for debate. The high-profile former Republican speakers John Boehner and Newt Gingrich like the plan.
The 47-year-old, a Republican, was once the youngest member of Congress, first elected in 2004 at the age of 29. He is now in his 10th term representing North Carolina’s 10th congressional district and chairs the committee on financial services. His political career is long: before Congress, he served in the North Carolina house of representatives and he worked on the former president George W Bush’s 2000 campaign.
While the top contenders for the speakership have, at least to some degree, cast doubt on the 2020 election, McHenry voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 win. McHenry helped McCarthy become speaker and was a key negotiator in the debt limit deal that got McCarthy booted by the far-right flank of the Republican party. But he also, soon after taking the interim role, ordered the former speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, to vacate her office in a “sharp departure from tradition”, Pelosi charged.
Beyond his new high-profile placement, the lifelong North Carolinian says his most important role in Congress is to “listen to the voters of the 10th district and act as their voice in Washington” and “to provide the highest level of constituent services at home in western North Carolina”.
McHenry also saved a child from choking earlier this year, when he helped the congressman Mike Lawler’s 15-month-old at an event. Lawler praised McHenry as a “good friend” who “became the favorite congressman in my household for my wife”, Lawler said.
