Behind the Rapid Rise of Trey Gowdy

Jason Zengerle: “For all the recent evidence that careers can unspiral pretty quickly in Washington—see the soon-to-retire House Speaker John Boehner or his would-be replacement, Kevin McCarthy—you might consider as the converse the bright and rising star that is Trey Gowdy.”

“It wasn’t so long ago that the third-term Republican congressman from South Carolina was a virtual nonentity on Capitol Hill, a point he concedes himself… To the extent he was known at all, it was for his golf handicap (a 1.7, he says, the lowest in the House) and for his bewildering haircut—an ever-changing coiffure that has rotated between a faux-hawk, a slick-back, and a modified mullet. And yet, in the last several weeks, Gowdy has been pestered—at times outright begged—by his congressional Republican colleagues to take McCarthy’s place as Majority Leader and Boehner’s as Speaker of the House.”