The congressman from the 10th District is Patrick McHenry, a Republican in 2004. He grew up in Cherryville and graduated from Belmont Abbey College, where he was president of the state College Republicans. After school he worked as a real estate broker. As a young staunch conservative, he cut his political teeth on his strenuous opposition to the Clintons. He once dressed up in an Abraham Lincoln costume at a North Carolina appearance by Bill Clinton after Clinton was accused by Republicans of rewarding big contributors with overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House. In 2000, he ran a website, notHillary.com, opposing Hillary Clinton’s Senate candidacy in New York. McHenry worked on several Republican campaigns in North Carolina, including Rep. Robin Hayes’ unsuccessful run for governor in 1996. In 2001 he was appointed to a job in the Labor Department and in 2002 he was elected to the state House. Read More

The congressman from the 10th District is Patrick McHenry, a Republican in 2004. He grew up in Cherryville and graduated from Belmont Abbey College, where he was president of the state College Republicans. After school he worked as a real estate broker. As a young staunch conservative, he cut his political teeth on his strenuous opposition to the Clintons. He once dressed up in an Abraham Lincoln costume at a North Carolina appearance by Bill Clinton after Clinton was accused by Republicans of rewarding big contributors with overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House. In 2000, he ran a website, notHillary.com, opposing Hillary Clinton’s Senate candidacy in New York. McHenry worked on several Republican campaigns in North Carolina, including Rep. Robin Hayes’ unsuccessful run for governor in 1996. In 2001 he was appointed to a job in the Labor Department and in 2002 he was elected to the state House.

He ran for Congress after Republican Rep. Cass Ballenger announced he was retiring, leaving an open seat for the first time in 18 years. In the Republican primary, McHenry’s chief competition was Catawba County Sheriff David Huffman, and both made conservative Christian values their main issue. Huffman finished first with 35% and McHenry second with 26%. North Carolina allows runoffs when no candidate gets 40% in the primary, and the four-week runoff campaign took a negative turn. Huffman questioned McHenry’s record as a businessman and accused him of having noisy all-night parties at his house, which also served as a residence for his campaign staff. McHenry’s neighbors said Huffman’s claim was untrue. McHenry accused Huffman of campaign finance irregularities. McHenry ran an energetic, door-to-door grassroots campaign, billing himself as a “pro-life, pro-gun, anti-gay-marriage” Christian conservative. He won the runoff by just 85 votes after a recount. Huffman carried Catawba County 59%-41%. But McHenry rolled up huge majorities in the counties south of Interstate 40 and close to his Gaston County home. He easily won the general election.

At age 29, McHenry was the youngest member of the House when he arrived. Instead of keeping a low profile and doing constituent work to sew up his seat, as freshman usually do, he became a noisy partisan. He made repeat appearances on talk shows for his ability to serve up red meat and sound bites. On the House floor, he took on Democrats no matter how powerful or senior. In 2007, he accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California of abusing her office by using military jets to fly home to San Francisco during congressional recesses, although former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert had also used military planes for his Illinois commute. (Current Speaker John Boehner of Ohio flies commercial.) At a private meeting in January 2008, McHenry asked why Republicans “shouldn’t be physically ill at the prospects of a President McCain.” And in 2009, he briefly joined the notorious “birther” movement by saying at a town hall forum that “I haven’t seen evidence one way or the other” of President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship. He backed away from the comment the next day.

His House colleagues sometimes grow weary of McHenry’s hijinks. After he repeatedly took to the floor to criticize other lawmakers’ earmarks in spending bills, the House in 2007 voted down, 249-174, one of McHenry’s earmarks—$129,000 to expand a Christmas crafts store in Mitchell County.

In 2009, when he was the ranking Republican on the subcommittee overseeing the Census Bureau, McHenry objected strenuously when Obama was reportedly planning to name then- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to oversee the bureau, which he and other Republicans called “a naked political power grab.” The idea was dropped, and McHenry voiced no complaints when the new census director, statistician Robert Groves, was named. Although fellow conservative Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota complained that some census questions were intrusively personal, McHenry said in September 2009 that every citizen had a “patriotic duty” to fill out census forms.

When Republicans took majority control of the House in January 2011, McHenry became chairman of a new subcommittee specializing in government bailouts, such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program for the financial industry in 2009. He told the Charlotte Observer that TARP was “a very uneven response from the federal government,” with some banks bailed out and others, notably Charlotte-based Wachovia, forced to merge, producing “a very rich environment for potential oversight hearings.” On the Financial Services Committee, he won enactment of his bill allowing financial institutions involved in multiple transactions to combine them into one contract, something helpful to the banking industry in nearby Charlotte.

Given the economic plight of the textile industry, McHenry frequently votes against free-trade deals, as he did in 2005 with a pact proposed with Central America and in 2010 with a Haiti trade relief bill. McHenry attracted some attention in March 2010 when he proposed replacing the image of Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill with one of Ronald Reagan. “Every generation needs its own heroes,” he said.

He has had little trouble at election time. In 2010, he had two challengers in the Republican primary, but won with 63% of the vote; he then cruised to victory in the general election.