PATRICK HENRY WAS ONE OF the most passionate and fearless orators of his day. Now, a similarly named politician is ruffling feathers with a variation on the great man’s battle cry: Says Patrick McHenry, a self-described “hard-core conservative” representing the 10th district of North Carolina, “Give me McLiberty or give me McDeath!”
Gray-haired at 29, McHenry is the youngest member of Congress, but that hasn’t kept him from jumping into controversy on Capitol Hill. Proclaiming politics his favorite sport, he has proved to be “a major thorn in the side of Democratic House leaders,” according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Last year, he rankled his three Republican primary opponents by knocking on tens of thousands of doors, while they settled for armchair campaigning in the summer heat.
“He’s just a damn good politician, and I mean that in the most positive way,” says 18-year House veteran Cass Ballenger, whose retirement from the 10th district last year made way for McHenry’s candidacy, and who is most recently infamous for saying in 2002 that a querulous black congresswoman sparked in him a “little bit of a segregationist feeling.”
McHenry, the first Catholic to represent his mostly Republican and evangelical district, had to be good to win in this tradition-loving, rural region stretching from the exurbs of bustling Charlotte to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Some voters were wary of putting someone so green and rowdy in the halls of power: How could a twenty-something real estate broker, after a mere two years in the state assembly, persuade voters he had the practical wisdom to lead, as against opponents already prominent in local politics and business?
Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, head of the Republican Study Committee, of which McHenry is a member, insists the younger man shows no lack of maturity.
“He seems to be wise beyond his years,” Pence says. “His confidence, his poise, and his premature gray hair can make you forget that he’s a 29-year-old man.” Also, McHenry has a young man’s appetite for work. That–and the fact that his seat is safe–allows him to style himself a “conservative’s conservative.” As such, McHenry says he is committed to a diverse portfolio of issues, but he has been particularly keen on matters of House ethics.
On the floor, he branded Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer hypocrites for demanding ethics investigations of Republicans while turning a blind eye to their own ranks. In a June 3 letter to Pelosi, he suggested that she herself might have violated House rules barring the use of official resources for political purposes.
Explains McHenry, “Nancy Pelosi [has] an agenda that she’s going to burn down the House . . . so that the Democrats can have a shot, just a shot, at winning the next election. I’m not content to sit idly by while they do that. Their philosophy is totally wrong for America, and their way of achieving it is even worse.”
A short, stocky Irish American, McHenry wishes more Republicans had his zest for battle on many fronts. The cosponsor of a constitutional amendment limiting the term of service of federal judges, he also rallied religious activists in front of the Supreme Court to protest the Court’s banning the exclusive, religious display of the Ten Commandments on public property. Nor is he timid about bucking the GOP leadership: Representing a district that has lost textile jobs, he was one of just 27 Republicans to vote against CAFTA.
Despite growing up in a down-to-earth, apolitical family of seven, he has been keen on politics ever since his parents took him to a Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms rally in Charlotte in 1984. To this day Helms remains one of his heroes.
At N.C. State, McHenry, a consummate networker, got involved in the College Republicans, and by the time he transferred to Belmont Abbey College, a small liberal arts school in easy-going Gaston County, he was serving the CRs in national leadership roles.
His College Republicans connections catapulted him into politics: CR friends helped him in his unsuccessful run for the state legislature while a college senior, and in his successful bids for the general assembly in 2002 and Congress in 2004. Today, many of his staffers are ex-CRs, causing critics to suggest that the congressman is too close to his home state chapter.
In June, two members of the state club accused him of pressuring them to vote for his preferred candidate in the College Republicans’ hotly contested national election.
The Hill newspaper reported that McHenry’s chief of staff, Jason Deans, admitted both he and the congressman made phone calls asking some members to abstain from voting, but they deny they threatened anyone. McHenry’s accusers were also not pleased that he used CR volunteers in his congressional campaign; the two camps disagree on whether this violated any CR rules.
In last year’s campaign, McHenry, a history major enamored of Stonewall Jackson and George Patton, directed his corps of college students in a door-to-door sweep of the district. He even threw in some technology of whose existence his older opponents may not have been aware: Dee Stewart, then his chief political consultant, hatched the idea of carrying portable DVD players to broadcast a personal message from McHenry as volunteers stormed through rural North Carolina.
For the fiercely contested, four-way primary, McHenry raised under $300,000, while his opponents garnered $450,000, $800,000, and $1.2 million, respectively. Yet McHenry advanced to the runoff against a county sheriff and won in a recount by just 85 votes.
McHenry believes his frankness about his ideas helped him recruit volunteers and win support. Billing himself as pro-gun, pro-family, pro-tax cut, and anti-gay marriage–and salting his speeches with references to the “Good Book”–he recognizes that he would have trouble getting elected in many other districts.
“You’re going to have ideas that offend people,” says McHenry. “I’m not willing to sell out my principles and values just to make someone else feel happy.”
Stewart, his former consultant, predicts his friend will play the firebrand for some time, because of his youth, his safe seat, and his tenacity. Whether this will endear McHenry–more a “Newt” than a “Denny”–to his party leadership, or allow him to rise to power in the House himself, remains to be seen. Either way, he should be around for awhile. He is already, as he puts it, “pretty McClose to famous.”
Joseph Lindsley is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.
