The North Carolina congressman, who leads the House Financial Services Committee, said he would join the growing ranks of lawmakers exiting Congress amid intense dysfunction.
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Representative Patrick T. McHenry in October. On Tuesday, he announced he would be exiting Congress.
Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, who made history as the first interim speaker of the House after Republicans ousted their own speaker and struggled for weeks to agree on a successor, said on Tuesday he would leave Congress at the end of his term.
The announcement by Mr. McHenry, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, added him to the growing ranks of lawmakers who have already announced that they will depart the House and Senate, many of them citing the historic dysfunction of Capitol Hill.
“This is not a decision I come to lightly,” he said in a statement. “But I believe there is a season for everything and — for me — this season has come to an end.”
The bow-tied and bespectacled Mr. McHenry, 48, arrived in Congress as a young, unruly bomb thrower in 2005 and has matured into one of the more sober-minded leaders in a Republican conference whose actions are more often driven by the attention seekers. He was named speaker pro tempore after Republicans deposed Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is Mr. McHenry’s close ally.
Mr. McCarthy’s ouster prompted the House’s first invocation of a post-9/11 crisis succession plan that requires the speaker to secretly designate an interim stand-in should the post become unexpectedly vacant.
Mr. McHenry had chosen not to run for any leadership position during this Congress, in part because he believed that the most effective way to wield power in the House was to not allow anyone to have leverage over him. But Mr. McCarthy had a way of roping him back in.
During Mr. McCarthy’s tenure as speaker, he cut out the official leadership structure, whose members he distrusted, and relied heavily on Mr. McHenry as his handpicked adviser to help handle debt ceiling negotiations with the White House and avert a government shutdown.
His departure from a seat in a solidly Republican district was not expected to have much impact on the race for control of the House, where his successor was all but certain to be another Republican.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership. More about Annie Karni
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Source: nytimes.com
