Profiles of elected House GOP leaders

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - Profiles of elected House GOP leaders

By The Associated Press1 hour, 3 minutes ago

Profiles of House Republican leaders elected Friday for the next Congress:

Minority Leader: John Boehner, R-Ohio. Boehner, 56, won election in February 2006 as House majority leader, promising a steady hand and reform for Republicans tinged by election-year scandal. Boehner was won of the engineers of the GOP takeover of the House in 1994 but was booted from the GOP leadership four years later after the party suffered losses in the 1998 midterm elections. Once a vehement partisan, Boehner worked as the Education Committee's chairman with liberal Democrats including Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) and Rep. George Miller (news, bio, voting record) of California to pass President Bush's No Child Left Behind education bill in 2001.

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Minority Whip: Roy Blunt, R-Mo. Blunt's job is to persuade GOP members to vote the party line — and he won a huge victory when the Central American Free Trade Agreement passed by two votes after he staved off Republican defections and kept the vote open to round up the necessary votes. Blunt, 56, was mentored by former Texas Rep. Tom DeLay and was appointed by Speaker Dennis Hastert to temporarily fill DeLay's shoes as majority leader when DeLay was indicted on charges of laundering campaign money. Blunt was defeated months later by Boehner when the majority leader's job came up for election. While Blunt is as conservative as DeLay, he has a softer approach in forging consensus within the party.