After 20 years at the Capitol, Cathy McMorris Rodgers leaves behind a changed Congress: ‘When she speaks, people listen’

WASHINGTON – It was late October 2023, and House Republicans were in a bind.

Divisions within the GOP had ended the political careers of three consecutive party leaders in eight years. After nearly three weeks without a speaker of the House, it was unclear if anyone in the party commanded the respect and influence needed to end the impasse and unite the chamber’s 221 weary and embittered Republicans behind a new leader.

Then, in a closed-door party meeting, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers spoke. As she had often done throughout her two decades in Congress, according to current and former lawmakers, the Republican from Spokane known universally at the Capitol as “CMR” found a way to get her colleagues on the same page.

The day after she urged them to back Mike Johnson – to restore trust “first in God and each other,” and ultimately with the American people – Republicans made the relative unknown from Louisiana their next speaker.

“Who stood up to nominate me in the middle of that whirlwind was not just symbolic, but it was meaningful to the members to see who would stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough. Here’s our leader,’ ” Johnson told The Spokesman-Review. “And I could think of no one better in the conference than Cathy McMorris Rodgers to do that, because she’s been a stabilizing force. She is universally respected. When she speaks, people listen.”

After 20 years in the House and a three-decade career in politics, McMorris Rodgers is leaving Congress at the relatively young age of 55 and what may be the height of her influence, giving up her position at the helm of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. In interviews in Spokane and in her office at the Capitol, she said she has no regrets about the decision, even after Republicans seized the “trifecta” of the House, Senate and White House in November’s election.

In interviews, current and former colleagues and aides described McMorris Rodgers as an uncommon lawmaker; an introvert more comfortable building personal relationships and working behind the scenes than grandstanding, glad-handing and hashing out differences in public; a staunch conservative who nonetheless earned the trust of Democratic colleagues and a reputation for tackling tough legislative challenges; and a loyal “team player” and faithful friend whose commitment to civility was at odds with an increasingly polarized, personality-driven congressional culture and a brash GOP brand dominated by former and incoming President Donald Trump.

Her critics, besides objecting to her conservative political views, have argued that McMorris Rodgers hasn’t done enough to stand up to Trump as he has made false statements and reshaped the Republican Party in ways that conflict with her professed principles. She leaves Congress at a time when the incoming president’s grip on her party appears stronger than ever.

Across two decades in Congress, McMorris Rodgers attained some of the most powerful and sought-after roles in both party and committee leadership, but those who know her say her résumé alone fails to capture the depth of her influence, both at the Capitol and in Eastern Washington.

From Kettle Falls to the Capitol

Not long after graduating from Pensacola Christian College, Cathy McMorris found herself back home in Kettle Falls and landed a job managing the 1990 campaign of Bob Morton, a family friend and Methodist minister.

When Morton won his race, she joined him as a legislative aide in Olympia, where Morton became a prominent Republican voice in the state House of Representatives, known for introducing legislation intended to turn Eastern Washington and North Idaho into a conservative 51st state. When Morton was appointed to fill a vacancy in the state Senate just three years later, he encouraged his 24-year-old aide to run for his old House seat, which she won in a special election in 1994.

A decade later, McMorris already had ascended to state House minority leader when then-Rep. George Nethercutt called the precocious politician to say he was giving up his seat representing Eastern Washington in the lower chamber of Congress to launch an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Senate. With Nethercutt’s encouragement, she won the race to represent Washington’s 5th Congressional District and found herself in D.C. at the start of 2005, one of only three female Republicans in her freshman class and just the 200th woman elected to the House out of some 11,000 members at that point.

Former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who represented southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District as a Republican from 2011 to 2023, worked as an aide to McMorris Rodgers from 2005 to 2007. Herrera Beutler said the freshman lawmaker would eat lunch and spend free time with her staff, making a point of building connections.

“There just aren’t a lot of members who do that, who necessarily bring you along if you’re just the staff,” she said. “She was, from the very beginning, willing to do that – and she still does that – and I think that speaks to who she is. That wasn’t strategic on her part. It’s just how she operates.”

From the beginning, the congresswoman taught her staff to make policy decisions based on how they would affect her constituents, Herrera Beutler said. And by not limiting access to the boss, McMorris Rodgers reduced the competition and backstabbing that make some other congressional offices dysfunctional.

She also made accessibility a priority in Eastern Washington, said David Condon, who served as her first district director until he was elected mayor of Spokane in 2011. He recalled how he proposed closing outreach offices in Colville and Walla Walla in favor of roaming representatives based out of a central office in Spokane to save money, an idea his boss politely rejected.

“She said, ‘David, we aren’t going to do it that way,’ ” Condon said, mimicking the congresswoman’s matter-of-fact manner of speaking. “ ‘I think you’ll find that more of our work happens in the communities than it does out of Spokane.’ ”

At the Capitol, the new congresswoman hit the ground running, winning a spot on the influential Republican Steering Committee. But for all she had accomplished by age 35, she worried she was missing her chance to have a family. Sitting in Manito Park for an interview in August, she recalled the advice she got from the late Rep. Jennifer Dunn, a Republican from Bellevue who was leaving Congress.

“She said, ‘Cathy, don’t wait too long to get married,’ ” McMorris Rodgers said. “And then she said, ‘Don’t ever forget there’s life after Congress.’ ”

At a fundraiser back home in Eastern Washington during her first term, the new congresswoman met Brian Rodgers, a retired Navy commander and the son of former Spokane Mayor David Rodgers. The two were married in 2006, with Morton serving as one of the officiants. Their son Cole was born the next year.

At the Capitol, McMorris Rodgers didn’t slow down, balancing a growing family with a rapid ascent up the ranks of the House GOP. Her fellow Republicans elected her as vice chair of the conference in 2008, making her the highest-ranking woman in party leadership.

Between giving birth to her daughters Grace in 2010 – becoming the first woman to have two children while serving in Congress – and Brynn in 2013, McMorris Rodgers was elected in 2012 as chair of the Republican Conference. In that role, she was the No. 4 member of House GOP leadership, played a major role in party messaging and presided over meetings of all House Republicans.

Jeremy Deutsch, her chief of staff at the time, said she earned a narrow victory in a secret-ballot vote of House Republicans by visiting many of her colleagues in their home districts and getting to know their priorities, rather than the more traditional approach of fundraising and schmoozing in D.C.

John Boehner, an Ohio Republican who served as House speaker from 2011 to 2015, said McMorris Rodgers was a hard worker who was always prepared, but what most stood out to him was that she had “a nice way about herself.”

“She can be firm, direct, but she does it in a way that isn’t threatening to people,” Boehner said. “There were times that somebody would suggest we ought to be doing X, Y or Z. And she would, in her nice way, suggest that there might be a better way.”

Deutsch, who worked for McMorris Rodgers in the state Legislature before serving as her chief of staff in Congress until 2019, said she was motivated to climb the leadership ranks less out of personal ambition than as a way to advance her policy goals.

“She really thought the leadership perch was a way to advocate for Eastern Washington in a better position, and for the policies that she wanted to advance,” Deutsch said. “But leadership is political in nature, and I think the thing that goes overlooked, too, is that Cathy’s a political force, and I think she was underestimated throughout her political career.”

As a party leader, McMorris Rodgers spearheaded an effort to bring GOP messaging into the social media age, including a contest designed to reward the members who gained the most engagement and followers online. Three years after her “Republican New Media Challenge” began in 2009, the share of House Republicans on YouTube, Facebook and the platform then known as Twitter rose from 30% to over 85%, according to a news release.

McMorris Rodgers said she at first saw social media as a positive way for lawmakers to talk directly with the people they represented, but it didn’t turn out the way she had hoped. She spent hours reading comments on her Facebook page and personally responding, “trying to set the record straight,” until she concluded that was “more destructive than constructive.”

She lamented that the House used to be about a “battle of ideas” to find the best way to improve Americans’ lives, but now both parties are locked in a zero-sum fight to the political finish.

“You try to discourage your opponent, you try to defeat your opponent, but now it is ‘destroy your opponent,’ ” she said in August. “And I think social media has amplified that.”

Years later, that conclusion would inform one of her biggest legislative priorities: the effort to regulate social media platforms and other companies that capitalize on Americans’ attention. Boehner said the rise of social media – along with talk radio, cable news and other sources of “noise” – helped transform the political environment over the two decades McMorris Rodgers spent in Congress.

“American politics got radicalized over those 20 years,” the former speaker said. “All of a sudden, instead of dealing with your electorate as they were, you’ve got to deal with the electorate as they now are. And as a result, it’s got to be tremendously challenging.”

McMorris Rodgers was already one of the most prominent faces of her party when Boehner asked her to deliver the traditional on-air rebuttal to then-President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in 2014, an assignment that had come to be seen as something of a curse after what Boehner called some “rather disastrous” performances.

“So I was hesitant to even put Cathy in that position,” he recalled. But after talking with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the speaker decided she was the best person for the job. “Of course, she wanted no part of it. I told her, ‘You can do this. All you’ve got to do is be yourself.’ And let me tell you, she did the best job ever, of all the people who’ve had to do that.”

Today, her remarks in response to Obama’s address are partly a time capsule from a “different political era,” Boehner said with a wistful chuckle, but mostly an example of the congresswoman’s commitment to decency and finding common values even with her political foes.

“Tonight, the president made more promises that sound good but won’t solve the problems actually facing Americans,” she said to the camera. “We want you to have a better life. The president wants that, too, but we part ways when it comes to how to make that happen, so tonight I’d like to share a more hopeful, Republican vision.”

She went on to describe how Republicans had a plan that “empowers you, not the government” and “protects our most vulnerable.” She spoke lovingly about Cole, who was born with Down syndrome, being “the best big brother in the world” to Grace and Brynn.

At the end of 2014, Cole was on the House floor with his mother when Congress passed the ABLE Act, one of her signature legislative achievements. The bill lets people with disabilities open tax-exempt savings accounts to pay for education, housing and other expenses without losing eligibility for federal benefits.

Ten years later, Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama would deliver a GOP rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union that stood in sharp contrast to the tone and substance of McMorris Rodgers’ remarks, warning that “the American dream has turned into a nightmare” before vividly describing – and blaming the Biden administration for – the rape of a woman in Mexico that occurred during the George W. Bush administration.

“Cathy would not have delivered a snarky political address,” Boehner said. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell she’d have done that. It just wasn’t who she was.”

She also wasn’t a natural public speaker, according to former aides – and by her own account. McMorris Rodgers told Glamour magazine in 2014 that she had dreaded public speaking as a high schooler and even changed majors in college to avoid debate.

Ian Field, who served as McMorris Rodgers’ campaign manager, press secretary and chief of staff between 2012 and 2017, said there were parts of the job “that truly made her nervous,” but she worked hard on her public speaking because she wanted to be the most effective representative she could be.

“Some things that are expected of a politician, like speaking extemporaneously with the press or giving an off-the-cuff speech, didn’t come as naturally,” he said.

“Cathy is an introvert, and that’s unusual for a member of Congress, and I think that’s part of what made her special and made her especially effective,” Field added. “Other politicians are sometimes more focused on their personas than on getting things done. Cathy was always focused on getting things done for Eastern Washington.”

A ‘unifying force’ and a team player

The second half of McMorris Rodgers’ tenure in Congress saw the GOP take a turn toward populism, as the “tea party” movement that had burst onto the national scene in 2010 attained a level of influence that forced Boehner to resign as speaker in 2015.

In the chaos that followed, the Spokane lawmaker was the subject of speculation that she may rise to become House majority leader amid a reshuffling of GOP leadership. Instead, she remained conference chair and was the one who nominated Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to become the next speaker.

Around that same time, McMorris Rodgers said in an interview, the role her Christian faith played in her life began to change. Instead of having her own plans and agenda and then saying, “OK, Lord, bless my plan, bless my agenda,” she said, she began “seeking God first and asking him to give me his strength, his ideas, wisdom, discernment.”

“I didn’t give God really a second thought in the course of a day,” she recalled. “And then I said, you know, I believe prayer needs to be my No. 1 priority.”

She started a prayer team, open to any “people who believe in the power of prayer and believe we need to prioritize prayer,” which has evolved into a regular Zoom call that includes people of different political stripes. Even liberal Spokane City Council President Betsy Wilkerson has prayed with them, McMorris Rodgers said.

Johnson, who described McMorris Rodgers as a mentor when he arrived in Congress and a faithful friend since, said her faith in God has made her “a steady person” during “a time of great tumult, and that’s what we’ve had around here for the last several years.”

“She’s sort of been an anchor for folks in that way, and someone who’s constantly reminding us of a higher authority and our higher responsibility,” the speaker said. “And because of that, she’s been able to gather like-minded people together and been a real unifying force at a time when Washington is very divided.”

Ryan, who retired from Congress in 2018, said he looked at McMorris Rodgers “as sort of a conscience of our Congress,” often speaking up during leadership meetings to educate her colleagues on policy issues or urge civility, while always thinking about the party’s success rather than trying to elevate her own profile or airing disagreements in public.

Nate Hodson, who began working for McMorris Rodgers in 2012 and rose to become staff director of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said she would voice her strong feelings in private but “has always tried to be a team player.”

“Politics is a team sport,” Hodson said. “She learned that from the outset of her career, and she has always viewed it that way.”

That approach would be challenged by the emergence of Trump as the GOP nominee for president in 2016. Like other prominent Republicans, McMorris Rodgers released a critical statement after a 2005 recording came to light in which Trump bragged about groping women, but said days later that she would still vote for him because of her opposition to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

When Trump won the presidency, he invited McMorris Rodgers to meet about a potential role in his administration. But it wasn’t the first time they had met, according to Deutsch.

In 2013, not long after McMorris Rodgers was elected conference chair, she and Deutsch met with Trump in the New York City high rise that bore his name. Trump had just acquired the Old Post Office building in D.C. to turn into a luxury hotel near the White House, where Obama had just started his second term.

As Trump and the congresswoman discussed potential GOP candidates for president in 2016, Deutsch pointed out that Trump – who had launched a third-party run for president in 2000 – now had his own address just a few blocks from the White House, joking that he may have a leg up on the competition.

“Stranger things have happened,” Deutsch remembers Trump replying.

At the end of the meeting, Trump showed off a framed copy of Playboy on the wall of his office, boasting that he was the only man to appear twice on the cover of the X-rated magazine. When it was time for McMorris Rodgers to pose for a photo with the real estate scion, Deutsch said, she was careful to stand where the Playboy cover was out of view.

It wouldn’t be the last time Trump’s libertine ways put McMorris Rodgers, a devout Christian who talks often about her conservative religious values, in an uncomfortable position.

In late 2016, McMorris Rodgers found herself back in Trump Tower, after it had been widely reported that she was the front-runner to lead the Interior Department in Trump’s incoming administration. She had already met with Trump and members of his team at his golf club in New Jersey, but when she walked into the penthouse office in Manhattan, only the president-elect and his eldest son were there.

“He said, ‘Cathy, I’ve been reading some of these articles and I’m concerned by some of the statements you’ve said,’ ” McMorris Rodgers recalled. Then he told her to talk to his son, Donald Trump Jr., who said they were “going in a different direction.”

In comparison to many other elected Republicans, McMorris Rodgers had largely avoided criticizing Trump as his insurgent campaign stormed to victory in the GOP primary. But in a lengthy Facebook post in May 2016 explaining why she had cast her primary vote for Trump – noting that he was already the presumptive GOP nominee by that point – she voiced some reservations, referring to incidents including his mocking the disability of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.

“Did I cast my ballot with enthusiasm? Not exactly,” she wrote. “Do I have concerns about the comments he made in the past and on the campaign trail this year about women; people with disabilities; and those from different backgrounds? Absolutely.”

When the 2005 recording of Trump bragging about groping women came to light just before the 2016 election, McMorris Rodgers released a statement saying that such language “has no place in public or private conversations.” But while other Republicans, including then-Speaker Ryan and Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, withdrew their support from Trump over his graphic description of grabbing women’s genitals, the congresswoman from Spokane said days later she would still vote for her party’s nominee.

That expression of loyalty wasn’t enough for Trump, who picked Montana’s Ryan Zinke to run the Interior Department. McMorris Rodgers stayed in Congress, where she remained GOP conference chair at the start of Trump’s presidency, helping to slash taxes on individuals and corporations in Republicans’ signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

When Republicans lost the House majority in 2018, McMorris Rodgers announced that she wouldn’t run again for a leadership role. With a Democratic speaker, there would be fewer spots in GOP leadership, and then-freshman Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming already had made it known that she intended to run for the conference chair position.

Instead, McMorris Rodgers would turn her attention to the Energy and Commerce Committee, which she had joined years earlier at the suggestion of the late Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash. In the August interview, she called leaving GOP leadership to focus on the committee “the best decision” she ever made in Congress.

“I’d served for three years with Paul Ryan, three years with John Boehner, and there were a lot of changes,” she said. “There was going to be a new leader again, and I just decided it was time for me to step aside. And I’m really grateful that I did that.”

Ryan, who had chaired two committees before being dragooned into the speaker role, said he encouraged his friend to set her sights on leading Energy and Commerce.

“I told her, ‘I think the best path for you is to go become chair of Commerce,’ ” he recalled. “I think she took that to heart, and then she became an extraordinary legislator.”

With Democrats in charge of the House, McMorris Rodgers kept a relatively low profile in 2019, until a December report from the bipartisan Ethics Committee found that her office had violated House rules by mixing campaign funds with taxpayer dollars and ordered her to pay back about $7,500 in misspent money. But the announcement by Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, then the top Republican on Energy and Commerce, that he would retire at the end of 2020 opened up the top spot on the panel.

Like in her previous runs for leadership roles, McMorris Rodgers wasn’t a shoo-in, but she beat out two men on the panel to become its top Republican. That made her the first woman to lead either party on Energy and Commerce. She wouldn’t become chair until Republicans took back the House majority.

Republicans defied expectations in the 2020 elections and picked up 14 seats in the House, narrowing the Democrats’ majority, but Trump lost the presidency to Biden at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. When Trump insisted the election had been stolen from him, he called his supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and urged them to “fight like hell” as Congress met to certify the election results.

The uneasy alliance between Trump and McMorris Rodgers was put to the test again that day, as the outgoing president’s supporters clashed with police and forced their way into the Capitol, succeeding temporarily in stopping lawmakers from formalizing Biden’s victory. A day earlier, she told The Spokesman-Review she planned to object to the election results – as most House Republicans did – “to give voice to millions of Americans that do not have trust and confidence in this election.”

Her fellow Republican Kim Wyman – then Washington’s top elections official, who spent weeks pushing back on Trump’s claims and explaining why the election results were legitimate – reached out and offered to address whatever concerns the congresswoman had. Before they could talk, rioters ransacked the Capitol, and McMorris Rodgers fled to an adjacent building as she reflected on the gravity of the events.

When police finally cleared the Capitol of rioters – after Trump told them in a video message, “Go home, we love you, you’re very special” – and Congress reconvened, McMorris Rodgers was one of only two House Republicans who voted to certify the election after pledging to do the opposite a day earlier.

Jared Powell, who was three days into a promotion from communications director to the congresswoman’s chief of staff, said that when McMorris Rodgers got back to her office, “She was pretty matter of fact, and was just like, ‘I think we need to put out a statement.’ ”

“Boy, we all experienced a lot of emotion that day,” Powell said. “I think we were all a little shocked by what was happening.”

Locked in the office together for about 10 hours with the sound of National Guard troops’ boots running down the hallway outside, McMorris Rodgers and Powell wrote a statement.

“What happened today and continues to unfold in the nation’s capital is disgraceful and un-American,” the congresswoman said, while Trump supporters still milled about outside. “Thugs assaulted Capitol Police Officers, breached and defaced our Capitol Building, put people’s lives in danger, and disregarded the values we hold dear as Americans. To anyone involved, shame on you.”

She called for Trump to condemn the violence, but unlike some Republicans who considered the outgoing president directly responsible for inciting the riot, she didn’t blame him for it. Looking back during an interview in August, she called it a “dark day” but repeated the idea that “there were a lot of questions” about the legitimacy of the election, partly because states had changed election rules to expand mail-in voting during the pandemic.

Asked why she had voted to certify the results without those questions being answered, McMorris Rodgers said, “I felt like the moment was lost, that it had been overtaken by other events.”

When the House voted to impeach Trump later that month for inciting the riot, McMorris Rodgers was the only one of Washington’s three House Republicans who opposed impeachment. Herrera Beutler lost her seat as a result of voting for impeachment, which ultimately failed when most Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump on a technicality.

Boehner, who left Congress before the Capitol riot, said lawmakers always have to balance the views of their constituents with their own convictions. But he pointed out that being a leader means that McMorris Rodgers has had to weigh the effects of taking a principled stand against her desire to hold onto her leadership role.

“A leader without followers is just a man taking a walk,” Boehner said, repeating one of his favorite quips. On the other hand, he added, “Leaders lead.”

‘Quiet leadership’ amid ‘shifting sands’

After Republicans took control of the House in the 2022 elections, McMorris Rodgers became the first woman to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, 227 years after it was established. That role, leading a panel whose vast jurisdiction encompasses most of the U.S. economy, conveys a level of power that few lawmakers have voluntarily ceded.

Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the panel’s top Democrat and former chair, said McMorris Rodgers is “always championing her district in Eastern Washington, but at the same time passing legislation that has national consequences.”

“You might think that those are inconsistent, but they’re not, because in the Energy and Commerce Committee, most of what we do deals with issues that are common sense and that people think about on a daily basis,” he said. “The people that shy away from the limelight and don’t try to be on TV every day are usually the ones that get the most things done around here.”

With Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House, McMorris Rodgers spearheaded the passage of some so-called “messaging bills” that are designed to make a point, not to become law, such as a package of energy reforms designated House Resolution 1, a symbolic number that signifies a party’s top priority. But she also worked with Pallone to advance numerous bipartisan bills to the House floor, where some became law.

One of those laws forces the China-based parent company of TikTok to sell the massively influential video app to a U.S. owner or face a ban. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case in January after lower courts upheld the law.

“If it wasn’t for her, that would never have become law,” Pallone said . “She was able to do it by building a consensus and convincing members on both sides of the House that it really was a national security threat.”

Sitting in her committee office in December, McMorris Rodgers said she had no regrets about leaving Congress, despite being eligible to serve two more years when Republicans will control the White House and both chambers of Congress. Asked about her top priorities in her final weeks , she rattled off a half-dozen pieces of legislation, making it clear that she wasn’t slowing down.

When the 118th Congress left the Capitol before Christmas, most of those efforts had fallen short, but Pallone said McMorris Rodgers laid the groundwork for bills that may pass in the future. She had a lasting influence on the committee’s culture, he said, by working behind the scenes to tamp down partisan animosity that threatened to derail compromise.

Hodson, the committee’s Republican staff director, said a political climate that makes it hard to pass meaningful legislation contributed to his boss’s decision to retire.

“In any job, there’s always silly things you have to do, things that you think are a waste of time, but generally that’s the minority of your time. And the substance, the meaningful work, is the vast majority of what you do,” he said. “That used to be the case in Congress, and it feels like that’s kind of flipped. There’s not the interest in actually legislating.”

As she ends a career in the House that saw her reach some of the most powerful roles in Congress by an age at which many lawmakers begin their political careers, McMorris Rodgers said she has no concrete plans aside from spending time with her family and working to establish a “leadership institute,” which she declined to elaborate on. She credits her husband with making it possible for her to become one of the most influential members of Congress while raising three kids.

“Brian’s the hero in this story,” she said. “He believed in what I was doing from the very beginning, and he has been there every step of the way and made it possible. The congressional schedule has dominated our lives. That takes a very patient person to be supportive through all of that.”

McMorris Rodgers said she wants to see her former colleagues “inspiring Americans to believe in America again, to believe in this great experiment in self-governance.” Asked what needs to change to make that happen, she said Congress needs to reclaim the decision-making power it has ceded to the executive branch over several decades.

American politics have changed since she arrived in Congress in 2005, Ryan said, but McMorris Rodgers hasn’t.

“Our party was different then,” the former speaker said. “She’s navigated the shifting sands of the Republican Party quite well, without losing her core. The key thing to me with Cathy is she never lost herself. She always knew who she was, and she’s still the same person as when she arrived. I cannot say the same thing about other people in Congress.”

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat who has represented southwestern Washington in Congress since Herrera Beutler was pushed out in the 2022 primary by a Trump-backed Republican, got to Congress at roughly the age McMorris Rodgers did and is balancing her job with raising a young son. She said McMorris Rodgers has been “a great source of encouragement for me.”

When the Democrat got to Congress at the start of 2023, McMorris Rodgers approached her in the locker room of the congressional gym and gave her a Bible.

“I would say it was very providential, because I know she sort of felt like she was going out on a limb giving it to a freshman Democrat from a swing seat,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “There are a lot of freshmen you could choose to spend time with or build relationships with, and it was very meaningful that we’ve been able to have this conversation, because there aren’t that many people here with young kids who’ve done that travel.”

Deutsch, who left McMorris Rodgers’ office when she exited party leadership and now works as a lobbyist, said she has remained a loyal friend even while juggling the demands of committee leadership and one of the most taxing commutes of any member of Congress. He got choked up as he recalled his former boss going out of her way to attend his brother’s funeral in New Jersey and making frequent visits to a D.C. hospital when his infant daughter spent more than two months in the neonatal intensive care unit earlier this year.

McMorris Rodgers also got emotional as she delivered her farewell remarks on the House floor on Dec. 10, after several of her colleagues – Democrats and Republicans alike – rose to share memories .

“My heart is overflowing with gratitude,” she said, holding back tears as she recalled her path from her family’s orchard in Kettle Falls to the halls of Congress and thanked the people of Eastern Washington for entrusting her with that role for two decades. “As I leave Congress, I urge all of us to look for ways to cultivate more grace, love and forgiveness in this world and serve others. We hope for a time of healing.”

Herrera Beutler, reflecting on McMorris Rodgers’ legacy, said that while she sees the paralysis at the Capitol as “downstream of culture” and not originating with politicians, the only way for Congress to function is for lawmakers who choose to govern, “even though, politically, there are reasons not to.”

“There are really, really good people there on both sides of the aisle who are working their butts off,” she said, likening lawmakers like McMorris Rodgers to Sisyphus, the mythological figure condemned to eternally push a boulder up a hill. “As a state and as a nation, we have so benefited from her being there.”

It remains to be seen how McMorris Rodgers’ absence will be felt when a new Congress convenes in January and the Republican majority must elect a speaker, but an incident last May offered an example of what Wyman, in an interview, called the “quiet leadership” of McMorris Rodgers.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who embodies the opposite of quiet leadership, filed a motion to oust Johnson as speaker over his cooperation with Democrats to pass bipartisan bills. Dawn Sugasa, who served as national finance director for McMorris Rodgers’ campaigns since 2009, happened to be visiting the Capitol with family and watched the scene unfold from the House gallery.

When Greene moved to oust the speaker, McMorris Rodgers stood up and walked to the Democratic side of the chamber – “a testament to the deep relationships CMR has on both sides of the aisle,” Sugasa said – making sure they had the votes to protect Johnson and avoid a repeat of the chaos that had paralyzed Congress barely half a year earlier, while former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., did the same.

“Her leadership style is strong, but in this political time, I don’t think the subtlety of it is valued as much as it once was,” Hodson said. “It’s just a shift in American politics. I mean, you look at who’s retiring over the last several terms, it’s people like Cathy, and I think that speaks to that shift.”

Former Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, another past chair of Energy and Commerce, said her departure will affect not just Eastern Washington but the whole state and the committee itself, in part because of the culture she cultivated among her staff.

“She’s going to leave a big void, as it relates to the clout of the Washington state delegation,” he said. “She did a masterful job.”

Sitting in her committee office in December, as her personal office was being emptied out, McMorris Rodgers said she was full of gratitude for the relationships she had built with her staff and colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike.

“I’ve been working alongside some of these individuals for years,” she said. “It’s emotional, to be breaking up the band.”

Ryan said people in Eastern Washington should consider themselves lucky to have been “represented by such a principled, conscientious, capable leader these last 20 years.”

“Not every congressional district is served as well as the 5th was by Cathy McMorris Rodgers,” said the former speaker, who called her “one of the most accomplished women legislators in a generation, by far.”

Johnson said he is sad to see her retire but happy his friend will spend time with her family in Spokane, where Brian and their kids have lived full-time for several years.

“I think that her years of faithful service and sacrifice have left an impact on the institution, and it will not soon be forgotten,” the speaker said. “And I’m trying to imagine Congress without Cathy here. It’s going to be a sea change for many of us – that includes me – so we’re going to miss her.”