Who is Rep. Patrick McHenry from NC, the new acting House speaker? What to know.

With the slam of a gavel, Rep. Patrick McHenry became acting House speaker on Tuesday after Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his leadership role.

McHenry, a 47-year-old Republican from Denver in Lincoln County, is now speaker pro tempore.

Here’s what to know about McHenry and why he has been mentioned before as a potential compromise choice for speaker.

From NC State to youngest member of Congress

McHenry is in his 10th term in office and serves as chairman of the Financial Services Committee. McHenry had been considered for the position of majority whip but chose the chairmanship instead.

He attended N.C. State University and transferred to Belmont Abbey College, where he graduated. He went on to work on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, and Bush, in turn, appointed him as special assistant to the secretary of labor in 2001.

In 2002, he won a seat in the North Carolina House before launching his campaign for federal office. He became the youngest member of Congress, at 29, in 2005.

McHenry represents North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District, which includes Alexander, Burke, Catawba, Cleveland, Iredell, Lincoln and parts of Caldwell, Gaston and Rutherford counties. Throughout his congressional career, state lawmakers have changed McHenry’s district with every redistricting process, but that’s never stopped him from winning his reelection handily.

McCarthy ally & leadership

McHenry has been an ally of McCarthy in his leadership fight in January and this week.

“Everyone needs to be on the same page about what the needs are for rules and structural changes so we can have Speaker McCarthy elected [Wednesday],” he told Punchbowl in January. “In a legislative institution, all the gifts of the institution are available when you have a moment like this … It can look as shambolic as you want it to look for as long as possible, but it still gets resolved.”

McHenry rose to national prominence in May as one of McCarthy’s chief negotiators in debt ceiling conversations with President Joe Biden and his staff. During some of McCarthy’s updates to reporters, McHenry was seen not far behind him.

“I’m a longtime friend and supporter of the speaker’s and from time-to-time he asks me to come in and do work on his behalf,” McHenry said. “He asked me to be part of the negotiating team and I can’t say no because I want to see this through. This is not my choice and my decision, but I found myself in this position and I want to get the best outcomes possible.”

But others have vouched for McHenry’s own leadership potential in Congress.

Former Rep. Kevin Yoder, a Republican from Kansas, predicted this possibility for McHenry to McClatchy in 2017, when McHenry stepped in to serve as deputy whip under Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana. After an attack on Republicans practicing for a congressional baseball game, Scalise was injured with a gunshot wound.

“The sky’s the limit for Patrick depending on what he wants to do and where the leadership voids occur,” Yoder said then. “He has the ability to step into whatever role is needed. It could be chairman of the Financial Services Committee. It could be up the leadership ladder all the way to speaker of the House. I certainly think he’s capable.”

Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said in January: “Patrick McHenry is the most important North Carolina politician who is not a household name. Whereas other politicians like Mark Meadows have risen to power by courting the media and creating attention for themselves, Patrick McHenry has risen to power the old fashioned way: quietly and through the institutional ranks.”

In May, Rep. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat from Charlotte, said he was glad to see McHenry at the negotiating table.

“I watched how he conducted himself during the mini financial crisis that we had a couple of months ago, and thought his behavior was smart and responsible,” Jackson said, referencing the country’s first major bank collapse since 2008.

A steady rise

Voteview rated McHenry, in last term’s 117th Congress, as 79% more conservative than the rest of the House and 58% more conservative than his Republican colleagues.

Last term he served as a ranking member of the Financial Services Committee and on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He’s a member of the Republican Study Committee and the Congressional NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus, which works to improve the 911 system.

“He’s by no means the senior most member of Congress,” Cooper said in January. “But he’s been in for a long period of time. He’s been through a variety of leadership roles and again, he’s risen sort of steadily, quietly, and classically, but I mean, it’s sort of the old rules of Congress, where you bide your time, you get better and better positions and next thing you know you find yourself as House speaker.”

The last House speaker from North Carolina was Nathaniel Macon in 1801. McHenry had a painting of Macon hanging in his office, McClatchy previously reported.

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