Rep. Patrick McHenry sat in the House Financial Services Committee office on Dec. 19, looking fairly relaxed, despite the chaos erupting around him in every other corridor of the Capitol.

He had already been asked to move out of his office in the Rayburn building to make room for the next member of Congress who would occupy it.

Cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall to his right. From one of them peeked out a plaque that marked his time as the nation’s first House speaker pro-tem.

On a table lay two large photographs of McHenry on the House floor during major moments from this session of Congress. He had only seen them for the first time that morning.

McHenry sat back in his leather chair ready to talk about his 20-year congressional career, and how it was about to come to an end.

But everywhere else in the building, the only conversations happening were about Republican infighting and a potential government shutdown, a constant refrain from the last two years.

McHenry looked calm.

“This place doesn’t stop,” McHenry said. “It’s just not built that way. So I look back at 20 years and think about the results I got, the type of work I engaged in and the people I engaged with and accrued over the years.

“There’s no grand retirement flourish, where the institution stops and all of America stops in reverence or whatever else. That does not happen for members of the House,” McHenry said.

As McHenry spoke, breaking news scrolled on the TV across from him about the latest developments in the efforts to fund the government. A funding bill would eventually pass and prevent a shutdown.

It’s similar to the place where McHenry found himself at the start of this session of Congress, the place that cost his friend Kevin McCarthy his leadership role and the place that made McHenry have to step in and lead the House for 22 days until Mike Johnson was chosen to succeed McCarthy as House speaker.

Rep. Richard Hudson, a Republican from Southern Pines and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, thought back to that moment as he talked about his longtime friend McHenry’s time in office.

“If you think about the great turmoil it was for Congress, for the country; and he was just such a steady hand,” Hudson said. “If he mishandled that. If he let his ego get in the way of that, if he tried to grab more power for himself, it would have been detrimental for the institution — detrimental for our country. To show great restraint, great judgment: to lose someone like that, you just can’t replace them.”

Becoming speaker

It was Oct. 3, 2023, when McHenry made his way from the back of the House chamber to the dais as he saw the vote to oust McCarthy going the wrong direction.

Few people knew at the time, but McCarthy had asked McHenry to step in if anything should happen to him. It was part of McCarthy’s role as speaker to name a successor in an emergency, under a post-9/11 rule. But people thought if that happened it would be because of something catastrophic, and not Republican infighting.

The clerk announced the vote total.

McCarthy was out.

McHenry was in.

McHenry raised the gavel and slammed it as hard as he could, releasing his pent-up anger.

It became a gif, a meme, the butt of late-night comedy.

And McHenry’s older sister did what any good sister would do: she sent him “the cruelest things” said about him on the internet.

“She knew that was exactly what I needed,” McHenry said. “I mean, truly. And she sent me some of the funniest stuff, and like some of the meanest stuff, and gave me her commentary about all of it. When you look like me and you’re my size, you better have a good sense of humor.”

For the record: McHenry would not comment on how tall he is, but he’s taller than this reporter, who is 5-foot-2.

And with the gavel slam heard round the world, McHenry recessed the House having no idea if he was allowed to adjourn it as speaker pro-tem. No one had been in this position before, so there were a lot of questions about what he could or couldn’t do.

As the days stretched on his colleagues offered him, and sometimes urged him to take on, more power than he deemed constitutionally allowed.

He went quiet, believing anything he said or did could shape the position’s power for future generations. And he didn’t take any of the extras he was offered.

“I’ve studied the institution and it’s one thing to understand checks and balances in a cerebral way, or study it,” McHenry said. “It’s another thing to be in it. What the Founding Fathers envisioned was you would primarily want to be jealous for your branch of government and then, in fighting for that branch, (provide) the checks and balances to the American people; their liberties are protected.”

McHenry said each branch of government needs to function well in order for them to be aligned.

“The House is meaningful because we empowered the speaker to be on par with the president, to negotiate on our behalf and to have the powers of the institution,” McHenry said. “The president pro-tempore of the Senate is a ceremonial gig. The speaker is a meaningful negotiator of outcomes. So if we diminish the powers of the institution, if we diminish the powers of the speakership, we diminish the powers of the House; we then throw out of alignment the constitutional balance since the first Congress.”

McHenry ‘the firebrand’

McHenry wasn’t always like this — so measured.

“Patrick preceded me by one term in the legislature,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a former speaker of the North Carolina House. “He had a great reputation down there, but it was interesting in the legislature. He had a reputation as sort of a firebrand.”

McHenry, a Republican from Lincoln County, won his election to the state House in 2002. Then in 2004 he was elected to Congress, making him, at 29, the youngest member.

McHenry was still in high school when he met Hudson, who was in college. They were working on opposing campaigns for governor.

“It’s just really incredible to watch his development over the years from energetic campaign volunteer to college Republican leader to freshman rabble-rouser in the House to really an elder statesman. He’s, of all the people I’ve ever worked with, he’s just one of the smartest on policy, smartest on strategy; great with people.”

But Hudson laughs as he remembers young McHenry picking fights with Democrats whenever McHenry thought they were spending too much or doing something wrong.

He said McHenry and former Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat, both knew parliamentary procedure well and the two of them would get into it.

“McHenry would just twist him in knots with parliamentary procedure, and Barney would get mad. His face would get red. Barney kind of had a unique tone to his voice anyway, but when he got mad it would get more high-pitched.”

Hudson said watching the two of them duke it out was “high entertainment.”

McHenry doesn’t shy away from talking about his reputation when he first entered Congress.

“What I did in my first and second term was, I wanted to be in the big fights that consumed the House and I thought to engage in those fights would further conservative policy,” McHenry said. “And in my second term, I realized that my actions did not yield the results that I wanted them to yield.”

Hudson pointed to a “seminal moment” involving then-Rep. Jeff Flake, who he said would “introduce amendments to strike people’s earmarks.”

“McHenry had one that was for the Christmas tree industry, which is huge in North Carolina,” Hudson said.

“Jeff introduced dozens of these amendments. Everybody voted against them, they’d all fail, but in this case, because McHenry had agitated Democrats so much, all the Democrats voted to strip out this earmark. It was important to Patrick’s district.”

Hudson said that was a wake-up call for McHenry.

McHenry told McClatchy he noticed that his actions weren’t yielding the results he wanted so he found mentors, studied what lawmakers past and present did and read about the institution and legislative craftsmanship and power.

“In studying all those things and studying the institution and the history of the institution, that’s how I created the pathway that I then followed, for frankly the next 16 years,” McHenry said.

Setting goals in Congress

McHenry said in his second term he decided he either wanted to chair the Financial Services Committee or become whip.

From 2014 to 2019, McHenry served as chief deputy whip, a position he called “an incredible honor.” His favorite place in the Capitol is by the whip desk in the House chamber, he said.

“That’s the cockpit for the majority party,” McHenry said. “You’re at the whip desk, you know the count, you know who has voted, you know how they voted and if you’re in that position you know why they voted.”

He was asked to step in for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise after a gunman opened fire, on June 14, 2017, on Republican members of Congress practicing for the congressional baseball game.

McHenry ran for whip, but did not win election.

Financial Services chairman

He then focused himself toward his other goal.

McHenry calls the issues before the Financial Services Committee his passion project, and thinks about how those issues affected his father when he started a small business in lawn service.

“That’s been my motivator on this committee,” McHenry said. “Helping the small business person that just wants to start a little business in their backyard so they can provide for their family.”

McHenry points out that the committee isn’t high-profile, but it touches every American in meaningful ways.

“So to chair this committee was in itself, that was the high-water mark of everything I dreamed of achieving in Congress,” McHenry said.

McHenry took the helm of the committee in January 2023. He chuckles slightly when he thinks back to his plans for the start of the 118th Congress.

They were thorough.

But you know what they say about plans.

In October 2022, McHenry sat down with his staff director to create his list of goals.

He wanted to achieve goals in three policy areas, all focused on the Financial Services Committee.

—Financial data privacy standards

—Capital formation

—Digital assets

“So we had this thing worked out,” McHenry said. “We knew the agenda, we even had a calendar for what we do, month-by-month and week-by-week, going into ‘23.”

McHenry said he had wanted to leave this session of Congress with changes to the law that he could point to and say, “That’s my mark.”

“And it turns out that the marker for members of this committee was the way I treated them, what I tried to cultivate in discussion in the committee, and it was the institution, and the testing of the institution in October of ‘23,” McHenry said. “And maybe I have a few fingerprints on the institution because of that.”

McHenry’s legacy

Hudson doesn’t downplay McHenry’s legacy as much as McHenry himself does. He said he can’t think of a more consequential member of Congress, in his lifetime, who represented North Carolina.

“He’s someone who’s been in leadership, been responsible for ushering important legislation through Congress,” Hudson said.

Tillis said McHenry leaves a big pair of shoes to fill.

After Johnson replaced McCarthy as speaker and McHenry gave up his gavel, McHenry almost immediately announced another run for Congress.

But by the time he needed to file paperwork to run, he had changed his mind.

McHenry said he knew by then that if there was a right time to leave, it had come.

He served 20 years and 10 terms, and completed his term limit of six years as either a committee chairman or ranking member, his role when Democrats led the House.

He said he wanted to honor the institution by not asking for an extension on the committee.

“I knew after that experience of October, that there was nothing else for me left to do here in the House, and I knew I that I wouldn’t be in a more meaningful position next Congress to affect policy and outcomes and get results,” McHenry said. “I knew it was time. It was time to let somebody else take over and build. I felt just a complete clarity about the decision and peace that my time was done.”

And he added that the last 14 months have confirmed he made the right decision.

Honoring McHenry

McHenry’s colleagues weren’t going to let him go without a gentle ribbing.

Every speaker of the House is given a portrait that hangs in the speaker’s gallery. They have to commission the painting themselves.

There was a question about whether McHenry, as speaker pro-tem, should get one.

Hudson said he couldn’t afford a full-size portrait of McHenry but he felt he was deserving.

So he had a smaller one commissioned, complete with McHenry’s gavel bang.

Why a little one?

“Well, he had a short term as speaker, and, you know, his stature is not as large, as say, the congressman replacing him, so there are a couple areas to highlight there,” Hudson said.

The portrait now hangs in the cloakroom.

“That was a great surprise,” McHenry said. “Rather than give me some deep sense of meaning, they roasted me, which felt right.”

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