WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer won his bid Tuesday to become the third-highest-ranking House Republican after leading the GOP's campaign arm during the midterms.
Emmer, who won a fifth term in Congress last week, will become the next whip in a House Republican majority. The GOP held leadership elections Tuesday before control of the chamber had been called for the party, though the outcome appeared likely.
"We're excited to get to work," Emmer told reporters after winning the post. "We're excited to be back in the majority."
Two other Republicans — Indiana's Jim Banks and Drew Ferguson of Georgia — ran against Emmer for the influential role that focuses on persuading members and rounding up Republican votes. In a GOP-held House, only the speaker and majority leader outrank the whip within the party's leadership.
While walking into the closed-door election, Banks described the whip's race as "a spirited contest between three strong candidates."
Emmer's promotion follows his work chairing the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) for the last two cycles. Republicans cut into Democrats' majority during the 2020 election, even as Donald Trump lost the presidency. And last week's midterms gave them the chance to benefit from recent election trends and seeming political momentum.
Republicans came into Tuesday likely to hold the House by a relatively small number of seats. That reality loomed over Emmer's run for the whip job on Capitol Hill this week.
"A lot of people appreciate the fact that he stuck with the NRCC job for the last four years. There were expectations of [larger] numbers, but the fact of the matter is we're going to be in the majority," Minnesota GOP U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad, who supported Emmer for whip, said ahead of the vote. "We can armchair quarterback, should it have been 20 more seats, 30 more seats, whatever it may be, but he delivered."
While this won't be the 230- or 240-seat majority that Republicans wanted, GOP U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, an Emmer ally, said Monday it was even more imperative that Emmer be chosen as the whip.
"With a thin majority, you're going to need a whip who has the nuance, who has the understanding of the difference between a deep-red district and a swing blue district, and there's no other candidate in this race besides Tom Emmer that brings that nuance and understanding to the table," Reschenthaler said.
The midterms were the first House general election races since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.
Republicans will likely be limited in what they can pass into law without Democrats' help due to their potentially narrow hold on the House, and with Democrats still controlling the U.S. Senate and White House.
"I'm willing to work with Tom and Republicans on good policy for the country," Minnesota U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, a swing-district Democrat the House Republicans' campaign arm tried and failed to defeat, said Tuesday ahead of the GOP leadership elections. "But what I don't want to see, and I fear their caucus doing this, is two years of 'Let's just scream from the mountaintops and focus on investigations.'"
