The Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer was the third party leader to try to galvanize enough support among Republicans to be House speaker after Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio failed in their bids.
But he rapidly found he was unable to muster the 217 votes he needed to get the job.
He was for a few hours at the center of the ongoing crisis gripping the party and causing chaos in the heart of US government. But Emmer did not even make it to a public floor vote in the House before his support ebbed away and he dropped out – not least due to withering attacks by the former US president Donald Trump.
Emmer was first elected to Congress in 2014, replacing Michele Bachmann, a far-right member of Congress who was one of the earliest members of the Tea Party. When he initially ran to replace her, he was described as “Bachmann 2.0” by the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine, but after he was elected he said he would be more low key than she was.
Emmer represents Minnesota’s sixth congressional district, which includes a partial ring of Minneapolis suburbs and extends north-west from the city. The district is solidly conservative – Donald Trump handily carried the district in 2020 by more than 17 points.
Emmer broke with many of his Republican colleagues and voted to certify the 2020 election. “Simply put, Congress does not have the authority to discard an individual slate of electors certified by a state’s legislature in accordance with their constitution,” he said in a statement after certification.
He did, however, sign on to a brief at the supreme court urging the justices to throw out the electoral votes from key swing states and suggested there may have been fraud as he supported Trump’s legal challenges to the election results, CNN reported.
Emmer’s rise in Congress was shaped by two terms he spent as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the wing of the House Republicans that helps the party defend and pick up seats. During Emmer’s first term as chair in 2020, Republicans gained a net 13 seats, getting them very close to a majority. In 2022, in Emmer’s second term, Republicans gained that majority, though they didn’t pick up as many seats as expected.
During the midterm elections last year, CNN reported Emmer reportedly advised candidates not to talk about Trump on the campaign trail – an accusation he strongly denies. That history, in addition to Emmer’s vote to certify the election, has reportedly caused friction with Trump, whose allies were said to be pushing to block him from the speakership.
Trump himself said he was largely staying out of the speaker’s race and noted that Emmer had called him to offer praise. “I think he’s my biggest fan now,” he told reporters on Monday in New Hampshire.
After Republicans won control of the House last year, Emmer won a contentious election to be the majority whip, the number three position in leadership that is in charge of counting votes. He narrowly defeated the Indiana representative Jim Banks in a contest that reportedly generated bad blood.
In addition to his vote to certify the election, Emmer has also taken at least one other vote that broke with the majority of his caucus. Last year, he was one of 39 Republicans to vote in favor of having the federal government recognize same-sex marriages.
Before serving in Congress, Emmer was a lawyer and state representative in Minnesota, where in 2005 he backed a bill favoring chemical castration for some sex offenders. In 2010, he ran for governor, losing by an extremely close 9,000 votes after a recount. He has seven children.
