New House Speaker Patrick McHenry Is a Lobbyist’s Best Friend
New temporary House speaker Patrick McHenry is a puppet of the financial, real estate, and debt collection industries, gladly taking 90 percent of his campaign cash from lobbyists in exchange for advocating blanket deregulation.

Rep. Patrick McHenry speaks to reporters in the US Capitol Building on September 20, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
Few Americans knew Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) before he took over last week as the temporary US House speaker — and if they know him now, it’s probably for swinging a gavel harder than you might expect, or for sporting a bow tie.
One reason regular people don’t know McHenry is because he hardly represents them. The ten-term congressman projects and personifies the cold, corporate Washington, DC, politics that systematically preference donors’ interests over those of the public.
McHenry only reported raising $856 from small donors (those giving less than $200) in the first half of the year — or a paltry 0.06 percent of the $1.5 million he collected. According to a Lever review, roughly 90 percent of the campaign cash McHenry has raised this year came from executives in the financial, banking, cryptocurrency, and real estate industries; lobbyists and political action committees (PACs); and payday lenders and debt collectors.