Leadership

Muhlenberg, a Lutheran minister from a prominent Pennsylvania family, presided over the launch of the federal government as Speake...

Elected Speaker on his first day in the House in 1811, Clay transformed the office into a position of real power, stacking committ...

Blaine served in the House from 1863 to 1876, holding the speakership from 1869 to 1875, where he rebuilt the weakened office into...

Facing minority obstruction in 1889, Reed simply directed the clerk to count Democrats who were present but refusing to answer rol...

Cannon represented Illinois from 1873 to 1923 and held the speakership from 1903 to 1911, combining the chair, the Rules Committee...

After six terms in the House, Dirksen served in the Senate from 1951 until his death in 1969 and as Republican leader from 1959. H...

Johnson entered the House in 1937, won a contested Senate seat in 1948 by 87 votes, and rose in 1955 to majority leader, the young...

A Butte miner and professor of Far Eastern history, Mansfield served Montana in the House from 1943, then the Senate from 1953 to ...

Rayburn represented a northeast Texas district from 1913 until his death in 1961, holding the speakership for 17 years across thre...

Thomas P. O'Neill, whose all politics is local became a rule of the craft, succeeded John F. Kennedy's House seat in 1953, rose to...

Daughter of a Baltimore congressman-mayor, Pelosi won a San Francisco seat in 1987 and rose through the Appropriations and Intelli...

McConnell, a polio survivor turned procedural savant, entered the Senate in 1985 and led Senate Republicans from 2007 until standi...

Grievously wounded in Italy in 1945, Dole recovered through years of surgery to serve Kansas in the House from 1961 to 1969 and th...

Son of a congressman and son-in-law of Senator Everett Dirksen, Baker won election in 1966 as the first Republican senator from Te...

The son of a Searchlight miner, a onetime amateur boxer and Capitol policeman, Reid represented Nevada in the House from 1983 to 1...

A West Georgia history professor elected in 1978, Gingrich built a nationalized, confrontational strategy, the Contract with Ameri...

Macon entered the House in 1791 and served there until 1815, presiding as Speaker from 1801 to 1807 during Thomas Jefferson's pres...

Colfax, a newspaper editor from South Bend, entered the House in 1855 as an antislavery member and became Speaker in 1863. He pres...

Grow first won his House seat in 1850 and spent the following decade pressing for free homesteads on the public lands, a cause bit...

James Beauchamp Clark served in the House for more than a quarter century, becoming Democratic leader in 1907 and Speaker when his...

Curtis, who spent part of his childhood on the Kaw reservation, served in the House from 1893 to 1907 and then in the Senate, wher...

Longworth represented Cincinnati in the House for most of the period from 1903 to 1931 and in 1906 married Alice Roosevelt, daught...

Ford represented Grand Rapids in the House from 1949 to 1973, served on the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassinat...

Foley represented eastern Washington for thirty years beginning in 1965, chairing the Agriculture Committee and rising through the...

Ryan won his first House election in 1998 and became the party's leading voice on fiscal policy, chairing the Budget Committee and...