Rep. Brian Jack (R-GA) defeated Rep. Rudy Yakym (R-IN) to become the next National Republican Congressional Committee chairman for the 120th Congress starting in January 2027.
As incoming NRCC chairman, Jack will be tasked with leading congressional Republicans’ campaign wing heading into the 2028 elections as the conference hopes to rebound following the loss of more than 30 incumbent members in 2026.
Jack secured 125 votes, compared to Yakym’s 53 in the Tuesday afternoon elections.
A House Republican in the room told the Washington Examiner that both candidates pushed for the NRCC to get involved in House primaries to protect incumbents in future cycles. The move would mark a strategic departure from the committee’s current primary strategy, which is not to play in primaries.
“They both were saying that there was, I think, a lack of insight into where the races really were,” the House Republican said. “The point was made — it was either out of incompetence or out of just sheer lying or not being honest about where the polling numbers were and what things were because so many members were caught flat-footed.”
The lawmaker continued, “We have so many members that, if you had just thrown a few hundred thousand bucks their way, would have come back.”
Jack has quickly risen in the House GOP ranks since his election to Congress in 2025, when he replaced retired Republican Rep. Drew Ferguson. He was a political adviser to President Donald Trump, which made him a key liaison to the White House and positioned him to lead the NRCC’s recruitment effort for this election cycle.
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Now, he’ll lead the committee with the tall task of trying to win back the majority in 2028 after the GOP’s major setback in the midterm elections. Republicans will need to flip approximately 40 seats to reclaim the majority.
Jack will replace current NRCC chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), who was chairman for two terms before losing his reelection bid this year. Hudson’s seat in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District flipped in favor of Democrat Richard Ojeda, who won by just over a 2% margin, according to the Associated Press, in an upset fashion.