From the historic 15-ballot saga to elect a Speaker and beyond, the slim House GOP majority in the 118th Congress has been characterized by conservative pressure, led in large part by the House Freedom Caucus — a group of around three dozen Republicans.
Tim Reitz is the hard-line group’s executive director — but he said Freedom Caucus priorities are overwhelmingly driven by the members themselves.
“The members are in the driver’s seat. I’m just the guy in the car helping them get to where they want to go,” Reitz said.
“My job is to help them organize and communicate — both internally within the caucus and then externally — as we identify the objective that we want to achieve, the battle plan to go do it, and then actually go make it happen.”
Reitz said he spent most of his first year on the job planning for how it would operate in a House GOP majority, and the structural changes it would seek. Those changes became the core of the Speaker election battle.
“For the first time, really, Freedom Caucus has a seat at the table,” Reitz said.
“House Republicans have really proven that when everybody’s at the table, we can actually get things done together, can actually pass real major legislation that has serious conservative policy wins,” he added.
Reitz said his most “wild” time in Congress was the Speaker’s race, from the uncertainty of knowing how “opening Pandora’s box” would shake out to monitoring how every member would be voting.