Acting speaker

McHenry named as acting speaker

The North Carolina Republican was hand-picked by Kevin McCarthy, put on a list back when the Californian was elected speaker in January.

KATHERINE TULLY-MCMANUS

Rep. Patrick McHenry is now the acting speaker, the House Clerk announced immediately after Kevin McCarthy was stripped of the gavel in a historic House vote.

The speaker pro tempore is imbued with all the powers of an elected speaker of the House. McCarthy hand-picked McHenry (R-N.C.) for this role when he was elected speaker in January. The pro tempore is kept as a secret, held by the clerk of the House, until a speaker is removed or incapacitated, a process designed after Sept. 11, 2001, to ensure continuity of government.

This is the first time that temporary replacement process has ever been carried out, following a speaker being forced out.

McHenry is a close ally of McCarthy and in January served as a key negotiator with different House Republican factions to broker the deal to get McCarthy the votes to be speaker. He also played a central role in McCarthy’s debt limit deal with President Joe Biden, which conservatives within the GOP conference disparaged as one driver of their push to remove him from the speakership.

As a longtime McCarthy ally, the position is an uncomfortable one for McHenry. In his first act as temporary speaker, McHenry called the House into recess to allow conferences to meet and plot a path forward. He slammed the gavel down with obvious frustration.

The North Carolinian is no stranger to emergency appointments, though not quite of the same magnitude. He stepped in to serve as deputy GOP whip after now-Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot in an attack on a GOP baseball practice in Virginia in 2017.

When he came to Congress in 2004 he was the youngest member at the time, at just 29. He also stood out due to his preference for bowties.

McHenry is serving his 10th term in North Carolina’s 10th congressional district. He was first elected to Congress in 2004 and chairs the House Financial Services committee. Before being elected to the North Carolina House in 2002, McHenry worked on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and earned an appointment as special assistant to the Secretary of Labor in 2001.