Tom Emmer sold himself as the 6th District’s seat at the table. The restaurant’s been shuttered.

For four years, Rep. Tom Emmer’s pitch to Minnesota’s 6th District has been access. He is the current House majority whip, the No. 3 Republican in the chamber and the only Minnesotan in House leadership. “We continue delivering for Minnesota,” he told St. Cloud LIVE in August, pointing to more than $40 million for district infrastructure. St. Cloud LIVE was one of only two local outlets he answered this fall, out of at least eight that asked, by MN-06 Watch’s count. His office says he secured about $43 million for the 2026 fiscal year. That’s real money, though he shares the credit: $18.1 million came from his requests alone, and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith also requested the other six projects.

On Tuesday, voters in the 6th District gave him a seventh term, by the narrowest margin of his career: 55.7% to DFLer Doug Chapin’s 44.2% in a solid R district. Nationally, voters took the “majority” out of his title. President Trump had asked them to “pretend please that I’m on the ballot.” They did. In the NBC News exit poll, 43% of voters said one reason for their House vote was to oppose Trump; just 16% said it was to support him.

Republicans lost a Kentucky district Trump won with 57% and an Indiana seat he carried by 17 points. In North Carolina, four Republican incumbents lost districts Trump won by 15 to 17 points, on a map the legislature redrew last year at Trump’s urging. One was Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the job Emmer held before him. NBC projects Republicans will end up with about 177 House seats, down from 218. They lost the Senate too.

Emmer may not even keep his leadership job in the minority. On Wednesday, Rep. August Pfluger of Texas, outgoing chair of the Republican Study Committee, announced he was running for the minority whip job. Republicans “need fresh ideas and a leadership team committed to rebuilding a culture with a clear game plan to win in 2028,” Pfluger wrote to colleagues, according to CBS News. “We started 2025 with a clear mandate, and although there were successes, I believe we left a lot on the table,” he wrote.

Emmer wrote his own letter. “There is no sugarcoating the failure we just experienced,” he told colleagues. “We lost, and I take that loss personally.” He is calling colleagues to line up votes, campaigning for this job more than he did in the 6th District, where I found no public campaign event by Emmer this fall. House Republicans vote by secret ballot on Nov. 10.

Where he went

Emmer rose to leadership by fundraising for other members. He spent two cycles running the NRCC, and his letter leans on that: Republicans were expected to lose up to 24 seats in 2020, he wrote, and gained 15. In 2022, Republicans expected a red wave and instead won a 222-213 majority. “We delivered,” Emmer told reporters. His colleagues, many of whom he had helped with campaign funds, made him whip, 115 to 106.

This time the election results were not good for the Republicans he campaigned with. I logged 53 stops where Emmer campaigned for House Republicans this fall. His committees gave those candidates $4.5 million, according to Federal Election Commission records. By NBC News calls as of Thursday afternoon (full results):

• 20 won, all in safe Republican seats. They received $124,000.
• 28 lost. They received $3.8 million, including a safe Republican (Rep. Addison McDowell of North Carolina).
• were still being counted.

Given these results, if he sat down next to you at the blackjack table, you’d call him a “cooler” for cursing you with bad cards. 

Leadership money flows to close races, and none of the candidates he visited in races that election forecasters rated “lean Republican” or tighter have been declared winners. 

The 28 who lost won’t be in the conference that picks the next whip. In other words, Emmer spent the fall helping build a majority that didn’t materialize. Now he has to persuade the smaller conference that remains to vote for him.

Emmer’s defenders have a fair case. The president’s party almost always loses House seats in a midterm. The whip’s job is to count votes and pass his party’s agenda, not to set it, and by that measure Emmer delivered. 

But his pitch to the 6th District was something else: That his position in Congress delivers local results. Doing the whip’s job well and representing Minnesota well are not necessarily the same. At least twice in the past two years, they were at odds, and both times he sided with his party.

The first test: Operation Metro Surge

In December, Homeland Security launched Operation Metro Surge, which brought some 3,000 federal immigration agents to the Twin Cities. In a February KARE 11/Star Tribune/NBC News poll, 66% of Minnesotans said the tactics of ICE and Border Patrol agents had gone too far. That poll was statewide, not just the 6th District, but disapproval ran high in the suburbs as well as the cities.

On Jan. 6, Emmer posted “God bless our brave ICE agents. Go out there and get ’em,” over a DHS post that read “GOOD MORNING MINNEAPOLIS!”

The next morning, an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in south Minneapolis. About two hours later, Emmer shared DHS’s account, which called her driving “an act of domestic terrorism.” Witnesses disputed that account. Emmer added: “Shame on the elected officials who endanger these agents by spewing lies and hateful rhetoric.”

On Jan. 24, federal agents killed Alex Pretti, also a U.S. citizen. Emmer again shared DHS’s account, blamed “the governor and local leaders’ rhetoric” and wrote that he would “not jump to asinine conclusions” even though bystander video contradicted the account he amplified. Nine months later, Minnesota is suing the federal government for the evidence, and Pretti’s parents say the government has given them no answers.

Another Republican with access to the White House used her influence differently. On Jan. 27, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to pause the operations in Maine and in Minnesota. Two days later, she announced that ICE’s surge in Maine had ended. Maine Democrats called it a political move, and Collins lost her seat on Tuesday anyway. But she asked, publicly, on behalf of both states.

I found no evidence of Emmer asking the administration to pause or change the operation. In February, Star Tribune columnist Rochelle Olson asked his office about rumors that he had worked behind the scenes to get Trump to relent on Minnesota. His spokeswoman called those rumors “completely false.”

Emmer and his supporters may not agree that opposing the surge was in his constituents’ interest. But the episode raises the question his campaign never answered: What is a seat at the table worth to Minnesota if it isn’t used when Minnesota and the administration disagree?

The second test: the tax-and-spending law

Emmer’s signature achievement as whip is H.R. 1, the 2025 tax-and-spending law Trump called the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” It passed the House 218 to 214. Trump singled him out at the signing. Emmer has called its tax provisions “the single-greatest victory for working families in history,” and this spring he blamed Gov. Tim Walz and the DFL for keeping no-tax-on-tips and no-tax-on-overtime out of the state code. The federal law doesn’t change state income taxes. To match those deductions, Minnesota would have had to pass its own and pay for them in a budget the state must balance. The state Revenue Department estimated the overtime and tips deductions would cost the general fund about $366 million and $126 million, respectively, in fiscal 2027.

Emmer has said much less about what the law cut. In trying to win public support for it, MinnPost reported, Emmer focused on the tax breaks and said little about the cuts to Medicaid and other programs. When he did address them, in a joint op-ed with Minnesota’s three other House Republicans, the four wrote: “Nothing in our bill takes away health care from the very people Medicaid was intended to help.”

Minnesota’s own agencies rebutted that assertion. The Department of Human Services projects that as many as 140,000 Minnesotans could eventually lose Medicaid coverage. State Auditor Julie Blaha said in July that at least 18,000 Minnesotans had lost SNAP benefits since the law was signed.

As whip, Emmer did his job: He delivered on the agenda that was set by his party. Whether the result was good for Minnesota is a separate question. It just so happens it’s the one he asked voters to judge him on.

The law also cuts against what Emmer once said brought him to Washington. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in July 2025 that it adds $3.4 trillion to federal deficits over a decade. In 2015, Emmer wrote that his seven children “are the reason I am in public office, yet every day I watch as their financial obligations to this country grow larger and larger.” This October, he told the St. Cloud Times the law’s spending cuts were only a start on the debt: “It doesn’t even scratch the surface.”

Bending the knee

In 2023, Trump sank Emmer’s bid for speaker with one post. “RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well,” he wrote, and asked: “Has he only changed because that’s what it takes to win?”

Emmer spent the next three years answering Trump’s question by acquiescing to his agenda. In 2024 he chaired Trump’s Minnesota campaign. When Trump took the country to war with Iran this year, Emmer defended it the morning the strikes began. When gas prices rose, he parroted the line that the pain would be brief. “This is a short-duration event,” he told WCCO in March. Gas is  about $4.00 a gallon, and diesel remains over $6. In May, he told the 6th District GOP convention that affordability was “the biggest BS word I’ve ever seen.” In September, he told Fox Business that “beef is at less than $2 a pound for ground beef.” Federal data put the average at about $7. Two days before the election, Trump posted that Emmer “will never let you down!” Emmer replied: “Thank you, President Trump!”

On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance explained the loss in six words: “The reason we lost is the war.”

Will he remain whip?

In his letter, Emmer made his case as the member who holds the conference together. “My role is to support every Member of this conference and help you succeed,” he wrote, according to The Hill. “We have never made false promises or tried to buy your votes.” Success in the minority, he wrote, “will require no less support and unity in our conference.”

He has described how he gets that unity. When a member balks at a vote, he told NBC News, his answer is: “OK, that’s great, but talk to the president.” A White House official told NBC that Emmer is the “tougher cop” to outgoing Speaker Mike Johnson. “Donald Trump is the Republican Party right now,” Emmer said. He tells reluctant members they’re with Trump “because your constituents support what Donald Trump is trying to do.” Voters overwhelmingly rejected that claim on Tuesday.

Tom Emmer talks tough, reveals weakness

Emmer’s method and culture ran through the White House. In January, the president Emmer sent holdouts to will face a Democratic House and Senate for his final two years in office, barred by the Constitution from running again.

Back home

Chapin, who says he’ll run again in 2028, held 23 town halls, by his campaign’s count. Emmer hasn’t held an in-person town hall in the district since Aug. 21, 2023. He told St. Cloud LIVE this fall that threats against him, his family and his staff have “exponentially increased” and that security concerns have changed how his office holds public events. The threats are real: Capitol Police investigated a record 14,938 cases against members of Congress in 2025. But outside the district, Emmer’s appearances were advertised in advance. A North Carolina campaign posted his Oct. 2 rally in Rocky Mount with a public RSVP form, and Florida Republicans promoted a Nov. 1 “Meet & Greet Rally and BBQ” for Rep. Aaron Bean with Emmer as the featured guest.

What did he succeed at?

As whip, Emmer delivered. H.R. 1 passed by four votes, and Trump singled him out at the signing.

Most of his campaigning time went to Republicans who lost, and they won’t be in the room when the conference picks its next whip. When Minnesota and the White House split over Metro Surge, I found no evidence of him using that access to seek changes. The law he whipped is projected to cost as many as 140,000 Minnesotans their Medicaid coverage while adding trillions to the debt he once said his children would inherit. And the president he tied the conference to asked voters to judge him. They did.

Two electorates judge Emmer this month. The 6th District already has, returning him by the narrowest margin of his career. His colleagues vote Tuesday. Even if he wins, he’ll be the whip of a minority. 

That access he sold the district on? For at least the next two years, it will be worth about as much as an Emmer campaign visit to those 28 Republicans.