The congressman from the 5th District is Jeb Hensarling, a Republican first elected in 2002. His disciplined brand of conservativism and political savvy have propelled him upward to become Republican conference chairman, the fourth-ranking House GOP leadership post. Read More

The congressman from the 5th District is Jeb Hensarling, a Republican first elected in 2002. His disciplined brand of conservativism and political savvy have propelled him upward to become Republican conference chairman, the fourth-ranking House GOP leadership post.

Hensarling grew up in Morris County in East Texas. He worked on his father’s poultry farm near College Station as a teenager and decided that he did not want to be a farmer. In high school, he started a Republican club and began organizing political events. He graduated from Texas A&M University and went on to get a law degree from the University of Texas law school. After a short stint practicing law, he got a job on the staff of U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, a Republican. Hensarling rose quickly through the ranks of Gramm’s staff and became his campaign manager in 1990. When Gramm’s fellow senators chose him as chairman the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Gramm named Hensarling as his executive director. Hensarling later returned to Texas to become vice president of communications for Green Mountain Energy, a local utility, and was co-founder of Family Support Assurance, a firm that aided child support collections.

After the congressional redistricting in 2001, Republican Rep. Pete Sessions, who had represented the 5th District for the previous six years, decided to run in the new and more compact 32nd District on the north side of Dallas. Hensarling became the front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 5th District. Like his mentor, Gramm, he listed cutting taxes as his top priority. Against four opponents, he won the nomination with 54% of the vote. Democrats nominated Ron Chapman, a former Dallas County appellate judge who described himself as a loyal Democrat who could work with Republicans. Hensarling referred to his opponent as “Judge Softie” for his record on capital murder cases. The folksy Chapman emphasized his fiscal conservatism and deep local roots. He tried to paint Hensarling as too conservative and extreme for the district, but his message failed to take hold, especially as high-profile Republicans came through the district with Hensarling endorsements, including President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Gramm. Hensarling won 58%-40%, and has been re-elected easily since.

In the House, Hensarling has a solidly conservative voting record. He has styled himself as a fiscal conservative in the mold of Gramm and has not been afraid to push Republican leaders to take more conservative positions, though he usually votes with them in the end when they don’t. He served on the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission in 2010 and made clear from the outset that he preferred that it concentrate on federal spending. He opposed the commission’s findings as insufficient in containing health care costs. He also disdained the 2011 budget-cutting deal that President Barack Obama struck with Republicans, saying it still did not cut spending enough and that “we probably all deserve to be tarred and feathered.”

He joined the Republican Study Committee, a group of the most conservative House members and became its chairman in the 110th Congress (2007-08). As RSC chairman, Hensarling crafted a seven-point strategy for House Republicans that included a constitutional amendment to limit spending and a flat tax on goods and services to replace the federal income tax. The party embraced his platform, except for his call for a moratorium on spending earmarks in appropriations bills. After the 2008 election, Hensarling was named to head fundraising for the National Republican Congressional Committee, chaired by his Dallas-area conservative colleague Pete Sessions.

Hensarling’s adversarial approach did not endear him to Republicans on the Appropriations Committee and others in the party establishment, including—reportedly—then-Minority Leader John Boehner. It didn’t help Hensarling that he managed Indiana Republican Mike Pence’s unsuccessful challenge to Boehner for minority leader in 2006. But Hensarling developed a key ally in Boehner’s similarly message-driven minority whip, Eric Cantor of Virginia. With Cantor’s backing he easily won the conference chairmanship to succeed Pence following the November 2010 elections. Tea party favorite Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., threw her hat in the ring for the post, but abandoned her bid after Hensarling’s staff trumpeted a long string of endorsements from other influential figures in the movement, including Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

Hensarling also assumed the vice chairmanship of the Financial Services Committee, a position that enables him to keep watch on Chairman Spencer Bachus, a lawmaker with whom some conservatives remain suspicious. Hensarling has called for the abolition of the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which he said abused their power. He was a prominent critic of the 2010 financial industry overhaul and helped lead the conservative revolt in 2008 against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which Boehner was charged with selling to his caucus. His bill to kill the Emergency Homeowners’ Relief Program, which was set up to provide loans to recently unemployed homeowners who have missed mortgage payments, prompted a rare veto threat from Obama in March 2011.