When was eric cantor first elected

Boehner and the GOP leadership team pulled the legislation on Thursday to work out differences with conservatives -- a move that plunged the House into chaos and marred the leadership transition. A divided House and Senate must also come to terms on a stop-gap funding bill to keep the government running after Sept. The two chambers are also embroiled in a debate over how and whether to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which has divided the Republican Party's traditional allies in the business community and a new crop of conservatives who see the entity as an affront to the free market.

Facebook Twitter Email. Eric Cantor says he'll leave Congress August Show Caption. Hide Caption. We can't do it at the lower revenue number. We can't have tax increases if we're not getting a transformative deal, so let's try and focus on some of the things that the Biden Commission reported, because we can actually support those things. No, sir. Maybe in his mind. Maybe he had that conversation with his people. But again, I think testament to the fact that there was not a deal, how is it that the president comes back and raises the ante again?

Clearly there wasn't a deal in his mind, or if there was, he broke the deal and went back and raised some more. I don't remember whether we were all just basically saying, "Well, we've just got to go fight the next election. The deal was always the definition that he had of a Grand Bargain that included tax increases, and not ever any nod toward a kind of transformational deal that we wanted. If that was the case, anybody who's realistic in terms of trying to strike compromise would say, "Hey, let's go to where we have things in common and set aside where we have differences.

I mean, that was really one of the darkest days, you know, is when we had to go through that government shutdown. I think it was a foolhearted effort, and it was something that, as we know, Sen. He had convinced enough members of the House Republican Conference to go along with him. What we in leadership had done is we had created this series of votes that would not have forced any Republican to vote for funding of Obamacare, but at the same time to have two separate votes and then to go to the Senate for it to deal with the problem, because people were very, very reluctant on the Republican side of the aisle to get tied with funding of Obamacare.

But the false notion that this shutdown would have gotten rid of Obamacare is what never sat well with me. It was inaccurate, and it was frankly a falsehood; it was a lie. You couldn't stop Obamacare by saying that you weren't going to vote for this funding. It was an entitlement in the law. And the only way you were going to get rid of Obamacare was to have the president agree to veto--I mean, to actually sign a repeal legislation. That wasn't going to happen.

You were not going to see a Democratic Senate pass a repeal of Obamacare and then the president sign a repeal. But somehow or another, the narrative started to develop that if Republicans didn't do this, we weren't fighting hard enough; that somehow or another the Republicans could do this, shut down the government, frankly go past the date [that] Treasury said we were going to be in default and win, because we could beat the president into submission to see it our way.

That's like saying that you're going to get Republicans to all of a sudden say, "OK, Mr. President, you're right; we agree with you on taxes; we need to raise them, not cut them. It was never a very realistic playbook, if you will.

It was going to end in disaster. There was never an exit plan. In the end, it all came down to John Boehner and I, and another 26 people voted to reopen the government to make sure we didn't go past the date Treasury said we were going to be in default. The reality was, you have a choice. You could buck the conference or Republicans and then be reliant upon Nancy Pelosi and essentially giving her reins to the floor. Now, that's not why we were elected as a majority, to allow Nancy Pelosi to dictate the terms of the legislative agenda in the House.

So that was the choice, one or the other. So what we did is we shut down. It's only the non-essential things that were shut down. But unfortunately, they included things like the VA [Veterans Affairs]. They included things like clinical trials for pediatric cancer patients.

You know, these are things that when they're shut down, you're not helping anybody. And plus, when you don't even have a plausible plan that will succeed, it all made no sense in the world. But it was this trap that we had gotten into, but in the end knew very well that you couldn't play with fire and go past that date that Treasury said we were going to be in default.

My view was the public has lost its trust in the federal government to do its job on the border. In addition to that, 40 percent of those who are here illegally were here legally at some point through a visa or some kind of entrance policy and overstayed it. So we had a serious problem of enforcement, where the federal government wasn't doing its job. It was not doing its job at the border. I felt very strongly we needed to regain the trust, and we needed to be able to demonstrate somehow that we were going to do that.

I actually took a group of members to the border at the time in El Paso to see for myself, because I'd not been to the border, and heard a lot of the stories from the local law enforcement, as well as the federal law enforcement about how many crossings were being still successful in a very fenced border around El Paso and Juarez. Eventually where I came down on this is we needed desperately to do something to beef up the border security.

But I also took a position that I still think makes sense today. We have a lot of those who are here illegally that are minors, that are children, and they were brought here by their parents. I mean, whether they're two months old, two weeks old, 12 years old, they're minors. And they're here and in most instances don't know any other country as home, but yet some of the people are saying, on my side of the aisle, "We've just got to send them home.

In addition to that, we have a strong history in our country of never holding kids liable for their parents' illegal acts. The illegal act was the crossing illegally into this country. They, the minors, didn't have a choice, so why not at least start, incrementally--again, we're going back to what we have in common. The president, he wanted to do the DREAMers, and we actually did a bill and passed it on another piece of immigration, H-1B's, that we both agreed on. Why couldn't we just say let's agree on the kids first?

Forget about this comprehensive stuff, because you're not going to get that through votewise on the House side. Plus, the American people don't have faith that the federal government will do its job, so let's start at least with the kids. Little by little, let's move down the field, incrementally, each week, each month, make some progress. Again, that was my view. Later I think my view came back to haunt me, but I still think it was the right thing.

I will say this: Much like what we're seeing today with Donald Trump and what's going on in the election, Virginia has open primaries. There's a reason in the South why there's open primaries, because there used to not be any Republicans in the South. So we have open primaries. They had already chosen their candidate by another means, and exit polls demonstrated that a third of the electorate in my primary--and we shattered records for it: some-thousand people in my primary.

Never before in the state at all had there been such a turnout in a primary. It indicated a third of the electorate were prior Democratic primary voters who were in the Republican primary to do one thing, and one thing only: elect anybody but me. Now, it's not to say that my Republican totals weren't diminished, because they were.

My Republican totals used to be I would get 70 percent of the vote, and I was down in the mids. But I won a majority of Republicans. But it was also demonstrative of the fact that people were very, very angry. I was the leader; I was Washington. Whether I took the position on immigration like this that upset my side, because I have people on my side of the aisle that frankly think we ought to do nothing--I don't agree with that.

I think we ought to make some progress on immigration, and I think we do it incrementally. So it made them upset. And my opponent seized upon that and said, "Cantor's for amnesty," right, which is totally not true. But he did that. In the meantime, the president and all dispatched his political forces. One day during the primary, there were dual demonstrations going on in Capitol Square in Richmond. There were the pro-immigration and Obama immigration forces, and my opponent had gotten the anti-amnesty, anti-any immigration reform, and they were all dueling against each other.

Guess who was caught in the middle? It was me! That same day, I got a call from my wife, and she was petrified. There were 40 people in my front yard demonstrating, protesting against my position on the Obama administration bill. So here I was, the obstructionist as far as Obama and his team were concerned, but yet I was the pro-amnesty [candidate], allegedly, by my opponent and his crowd. So it was this perfect storm. And to boot, you had at that point in time this wave of kids that were being brought up by the coyotes and others from Mexico that were crossing the border the week before my primary.

It really was a perfect storm. It was obviously not a pleasant experience. It's been sometime now, a lot of lessons learned. And you know, I sort of landed on my feet. I'm an optimist, and I believe that things happen, and sometimes when they happen you don't really understand why, and the passage of time will help you begin to do that.

I think that my experience has been true to that. At the time, I said to my wife and my kids, I said: "Look, this has happened. We're going to be strong. We have each other. We have a wonderful future ahead of us. This is not the way we wanted it. At the time, I had all my family; my parents were still alive. I've since lost my father.

I've never had a loss, and it was a huge one in a very public way. I remember telling my wife: "We're going to go up on that stage. You're not going to cry. This is not something that is at all that catastrophic, you know.

We still have each other, our health, our kids, our family. We'll get through this. I think we ought to go and take some lessons from how real life works. Big things--people always want to talk about big things. But you know how you get to big things? They're a combination of a lot of little things. I always say think about most Americans when they want to redo their house. They can't afford to go and redo the whole thing. They do their kitchen.

Then they do a bathroom. Then they may do their basement. Then they may do their master bedroom. Then eventually you get it all done. That's where we ought to start again, practice working together, week by week, month by month. If you practice like that, perhaps you can get these little things to amount to bigger things that you could do together. But we have now spent the last seven years stuck in a rut, going back to the president, his attitude from the very beginning on the stimulus bill, that then just transpired.

Equal opportunity for blame. My side then overreacted as well. The mission became, on the president's side, he was going to defend everything he did, and on the Republican side, we were going to try and tear it down, versus saying: "Listen, we're going to disagree on some things.

We're in opposite parties and believe in different things, but certainly as Americans we have a lot in common. What can we do? He defeated W. Brad Blanton independent in the general election. He defeated Ben L. He defeated Warren A. Stewart D in the general election. The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may not represent all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer, and campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete.

For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law. Candidates for Congress were required to file up to seven main reports with the Federal Election Commission during the elections season. Below are Cantor's reports. Cantor won re-election to the U.

House in The Personal Gain Index U. Congress is a two-part measurement that illustrates the extent to which members of the U. Congress have prospered during their tenure as public servants.

It consists of two different metrics:. Based on congressional financial disclosure forms and calculations made available by OpenSecrets. Cantor ranked as the 47th most wealthy representative in Between and , the average annual percentage increase for a member of Congress was In June , it was announced that she was elected to the board of the cosmetics company Revlon.

Based on an analysis of bill sponsorship by GovTrack , Cantor was a " moderate Republican leader ," as of July 2, The website OpenCongress tracks the voting records of each member to determine with whom he or she voted most and least often.

The results include a member from each party. According to the website GovTrack, Cantor missed of 8, roll call votes from January to April This amounts to 4. The website Legistorm compiles staff salary information for members of Congress. Overall, Virginia ranked 29th in average salary for representative staff.

The average U. Each year National Journal publishes an analysis of how liberally or conservatively each member of Congress voted in the previous year. Cantor was one of two members who ranked 66th in the conservative rankings in Cantor ranked 73rd in the conservative rankings in Cantor voted with the Republican Party Note: Please contact us if the personal information below requires an update. Cantor and his wife, Diana, have three children. Eric Cantor News Feed.

What's on my ballot? Elections in How to vote How to run for office Ballot measures. Who represents me? President U. Ballotpedia features , encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers. Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion.

Share this page Follow Ballotpedia. What's on your ballot? Jump to: navigation , search. This page was current at the end of the official's last term in office covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates. Republican Party. Personal website. To view the full congressional electoral history for Eric Cantor, click [show] to expand the section.

House , "Roll Call Vote H. Please see the Congressional Net Worth data for Ballotpedia spreadsheet for more information on this calculation. Virginia's current delegation to the United States Congress.

Tim Kaine D. Mark Warner D. District 1. Bobby Scott D. Donald McEachin D. Benjamin Lee Cline R. Abigail Spanberger D. Donald Sternoff Beyer D. Morgan Griffith R.

Jennifer Wexton D. A public poll had the race much closer, with a 13 point lead for Cantor. We should assume that internal polls are biased and misleading — unless we have a good reason to think otherwise.

As demonstrated by Daily Kos Elections , McLaughlin has gotten many races wrong in the past two years. In Virginia, it had Mitt Romney and U. Senate hopeful George Allen winning their races easily. Both Republicans lost by a significant margin. He spent a lot of money on negative advertising against a little-known opponent.