It was an embarrassing moment for Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday evening as a resolution to bar President Trump from taking military action in Venezuela without congressional approval teetered on the brink of passage.
Mr. Johnson, who holds a tenuous grip on his tiny majority on the best of days, needed one more Republican to show up and oppose the measure to defeat it. So for 22 uncomfortable minutes, he held the vote open while Democrats heckled him and he dispatched a Capitol Police escort to rush Representative Wesley Hunt of Texas from a Washington-area airport to the Capitol to cast the decisive vote.
Mr. Hunt, a second-term Republican who in October announced a primary challenge to Senator John Cornyn, the veteran Republican from Texas, has missed 95 percent of roll call votes since Dec. 18, according to GovTrack, a nonprofit website that tracks congressional activities. During that time, he showed up for just three out of 58 votes.
But on Friday, he issued a triumphal statement defending his chronic absenteeism and casting himself as worthy of kudos for showing up at all.
“In the middle of his campaign to retire a 40-year career politician, John Cornyn, Congressman Wesley Hunt left the campaign trail, rushed to Washington, and cast the decisive vote that obliterated the radical Democrats’ attempt to block President Trump from securing the Western Hemisphere,” said the news release from Mr. Hunt’s campaign.
The news release claimed that Mr. Hunt’s absence had never stopped a Republican measure from passing, an astonishingly low bar for measuring the performance of a member of Congress elected to serve hundreds of thousands of constituents and with a salary of $174,000. It did not mention that, given Mr. Johnson’s narrow edge in the House, a single defection or absence can tank legislation, meaning that the speaker’s ability to bring up a bill at all rests largely on who shows up and who does not.
Mr. Hunt is hardly the first candidate to prioritize time at home over casting votes in Washington. Dinging an opponent for failing to do his day job is a standard line of attack during a political campaign. And candidates often have to strike a tricky balance between making time to meet voters and fulfilling the basic duties of the post they hold. Mr. Cornyn’s campaign regularly attacks Mr. Hunt over his voting record.
Last year, Mr. Hunt missed about 24 percent of House votes. That is far higher than the average number of missed votes by a House member: about 2 percent, according to GovTrack.
Mr. Hunt has often defended his absences by arguing that “the votes he’s taken” are more important than the “votes he has missed.” He has also noted that he missed many votes in 2023, when his son spent months in a neonatal intensive care unit, and more still to care for him after he was released.
On Friday, Mr. Hunt framed his presence in Washington as a cause for celebration.
“Not a single Republican bill, priority, or resolution has been stopped because Wesley Hunt chose to barnstorm Texas and earn the trust of voters while fighting for them in Washington,” his statement said.
The chest-thumping news release followed a dramatic day on Capitol Hill, as Mr. Hunt raced the clock to get back in time for the vote. A photograph of him appearing tense on a people mover at Dulles International Airport spread across social media on Thursday afternoon, clocking his slow progress to the Capitol as his colleagues cast a series of votes on legislation to fund the government, all of which he missed.
“Pathetic,” Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, shouted at the Republicans as they milled around on the House floor long after the allotted two minutes for the war powers vote had passed, waiting for Mr. Hunt to appear so they could defeat it on a tie. “You know better.”
Matt Mackowiak, a spokesman for Mr. Cornyn’s campaign, said on Friday that Mr. Hunt was “refusing to fight for Trump’s agenda by putting his selfish political ambitions before his responsibilities. He needs to do his job.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
The post Defending His Absence in House, Hunt Celebrates Casting a Vote appeared first on New York Times.
