Chip Roy headlines Freedom Caucus departures that could transform House GOP

Boisterous Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) is headlining a wave of members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus who are seeking higher office and will depart the lower chamber after the midterms, setting the House Republican Conference up for a transformation in its most rambunctious wing.

Roy, one of the most vocal and central players in the Freedom Caucus, announced on Thursday he will run for Texas attorney general.  

Several other notable Freedom Caucus members are seeking higher office, too: Reps.  Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Byron Donalds (Fla.), and Ralph Norman (S.C.) are running for governor; Rep. Barry Moore (Ala.) launched a Senate bid last week; and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) is interested in being appointed to the Senate if Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) wins the governorship.

Some members hope that the departures of those members who have often cause headaches will lead to greater GOP harmony and less chaos in Congress.

“I wish Chip Roy nothing but the best. I hope he does very well,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who often criticizes the House Freedom Caucus. 

“The outcome of Chip leaving is a more productive Congress. He’s been a contrarian, and he’s been an obstructionist,” Van Orden said.

But sources in GOP leadership and other Republicans who have been at the center of major negotiations with Roy see him as an important bridge between the Freedom Caucus and the rest of the House GOP and someone who negotiates in good faith. And they wonder who will fill that role in the next Congress.

“My hope is that we'll have members from the Freedom Caucus step up to fill that void, because there's a there's a need for us to continue to work together,” said Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.), who negotiated with Roy as a leader in the Republican Main Street Caucus, which sees itself as more pragmatic.

Hardline resistance to GOP leadership has held up major votes on the House floor over the past several years and Roy has been a key player at the center of it, personifying the House Freedom Caucus’s ethos of using every leverage point available to maximum effect in order to secure what they see as more conservative policy wins.

After the 15-ballot election of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in January 2023, Roy and Norman landed important spots on the House Rules Committee, the last stop for major legislation before it hits the House floor.

But in other cases fellow House members have questioned the effectiveness of Freedom Caucus members.

This summer, Roy and his fellow fiscal hawks were the final holdouts on President Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” of tax cut extensions and spending priorities, eventually coming around to support the bill after marathon negotiations with the White House despite not securing changes in the bill’s text.

Van Orden called the Texas congressman “Flip Roy,” since he and his colleagues will “shut down the House, make everybody hang out … and then he votes on the bill anyway.”

Roy and Freedom Caucus members, though, took credit for working for months to push the legislation to the right, negotiating higher spending reductions as a condition of tax cut extensions, pushing to speed up expiration of green energy tax credits, and speeding up new work requirements for Medicaid.

Bice recalled working closely with Roy and Donalds in the last Congress as Republican factions negotiated the contours of a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown – and while the measure didn’t get across the finish line, she build a rapport and relationship with the Freedom Caucus members.

“These are people that, in Byron's case, had the ear of the President and but also understood where his caucus was and was a very good negotiator,” Bice said.

Bice added of Roy: “Did I always agree with his approach? No. Sometimes I would actually say to him, you know, ‘Are you sure you want to do this, or do you feel like this is going to be in your best interest?’ But he fights for what he believes in. And I actually think that's one of the things that you know has the potential to make him a great attorney general for Texas.”

Roy, who was previously a chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is widely recognized as a heavyweight in not only messaging, but policy and strategy.

“Chip is quasi-unique in his ability to courageously pick principled policy fights, but also an extremely smart strategist who understands who to use the process to his advantage, and both of those are combined with an ability to get people in a room and find a solution that bends policy outcomes towards the desired outcome,” said Wade Miller, executive director at Citizens for Renewing America and a former chief of staff to Roy. “Most members of Congress have none of those traits. Chip Roy has all of those traits.”

Outside observers have largely assumed that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and others in GOP leadership will be relieved at Roy and other Freedom Caucus members heading for the exits. Johnson has not yet commented on Roy’s attorney general bid. The Hill is told that Roy did give leadership a heads up that he was going to seek the position.

Roy’s reputation as thorn for the GOP has also led to thrashings from Trump. In December, the then-president-elect invited a primary challenger to Roy after the Texas congressman opposed the Trump-supported idea of raising the nation’s debt ceiling without other spending restrictions.

But Freedom Caucus members supportive of Roy are positioning him as a Trump ally. Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) on Thursday called Roy a “tireless advocate for President Trump's agenda,” while Rep. Lauren Borbert (R-Colo.) called Roy “a steadfast conservative who has consistently delivered for President Trump and the people of Texas.”

“The only thing more effective for the conservative movement and delivering for President Trump than Chip Roy in Congress is Chip Roy as Texas AG,” said Tim Reitz, Executive Director of the House Freedom Caucus. 

And as for the broader coming changes in the Freedom Caucus with several of its members seeking higher office, Reitz said: “We’re losing a lot of great guys with institutional knowledge and experience but we fortunately have a lot of rising stars coming up who will be the next generation of conservative fighters.”

The Freedom Caucus, founded in 2015, has seen many of its other former heavy-hitters leave of higher positions: Mark Meadows became chief of staff to Trump, Raul Labrador became Idaho’s attorney general and Ron DeSantis became governor or Florida.

Members of the group are clearly ambitious relative to their Republican colleagues.

Michael E. Bednarczuk, a professor of Political Science at Austin Peay State University who is writing a book about the House Freedom Caucus, the group’s members are about five times as likely as non-Freedom Caucus Republicans to run for higher office — with about 17% of Freedom Caucus members running for higher office since their founding, compared to 3% in of the rest of the GOP caucus.

Several individuals pointed to freshman Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) as a member who could be a heavyweight for the group in the future. And Miller, the former chief of staff to Roy, noted that the Freedom Caucus has a state network building up legislators who share the Freedom Caucus vision and could join the group in the future.

“HFC will be different, but it will still be heavily involved in shaping policy outcomes in DC,” Miller said.

Roy portrayed the Freedom Caucus as a training ground of sorts for Republicans.

“A new generation is emerging with @freedomcaucus,” Roy posted on X on Thursday. “And battle tested fighters are now going home to deliver alongside @realDonaldTrump. The team is growing…”