RECOGNIZING HAYDEN HAYNES

On 2026-06-04, Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA-4) delivered a floor speech titled "RECOGNIZING HAYDEN HAYNES" in the House.

RECOGNIZING HAYDEN HAYNES

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 95 (Thursday, June 4, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 95 (Thursday, June 4, 2026)] [House] [Pages H3872-H3873] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] RECOGNIZING HAYDEN HAYNES (Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.) Mr. JOHNSON of LOUISIANA. I just want to take a brief point of personal privilege today to bid farewell to the most integral member of my staff and somebody who has been at my side for more than a decade here, my chief of staff, Hayden Haynes. All of us--we all do this--we deeply value our teams, and when you lose a leader, it is a big thing. Scripture says we give honor where honor is due, so I want to do that for just a moment here. I first met this guy, Hayden, in 2016. I was a member of the Louisiana Legislature, just got started. We crossed paths at a local political event. He was bright and ambitious and eager to talk more. You have all experienced that. You have got staff members like that, young people, kids that you meet along the way. I was impressed with him. He called me the next day to reach out to set up lunch, and I thought, okay, he is a young guy. I will invest the time. I had no idea what the purpose was for the lunch. I didn't know it was going to be a strategy session for the future of my career, but that is what happened. So this young fellow just came in--maybe you guys can relate to this. Maybe you had a meeting like this. A young, bright, ambitious guy comes in. He has a yellow pad. He sits down to lunch at a pizza joint, and it says at the top of the pad: ``Path to Congress'' [[Page H3873]] in big, bold letters across the top. He spent the next hour mapping out what he saw to be a road to D.C. that ran through our little town of Shreveport, Louisiana. I thought it was amusing, but we didn't have an open congressional seat. I appreciated him for his time, and we left there with nothing but an agreement to keep in touch. As fate would have it, a couple of months later, the Fourth Congressional District seat did open up. My predecessor called and encouraged me to run, and others did as well. My wife, Kelly, and I prayed about it, and we felt like we should do it. The first thought I had was this young man who sat down with a yellow pad, so I called him up. He came on board, and he became my first campaign manager. Together, we worked nights and weekends. We had a dingy, little office above a local radio station. We had no funds, no name ID, no connections. I mean, it really was amazing. The one thing we had was Kelly and I had complete faith in what we felt like God had called us to do. We had total faith in this young kid because he was so ambitious and bright, and he had that yellow pad. Well, fast-forward, we won the race. It was in Louisiana. We have jungle primaries like they have in California and a couple of other States. It was an eight-way race. We won it, and it was the first of many victories that we would have together. We were on our way to Washington. In Louisiana, we have a late election cycle because it is a jungle primary, and the runoff is in December. So if you are elected as a freshman from Louisiana, you come in as the last member of your freshman class. I got the lowliest office draw. I got the worst office in Congress, as noted by The Washington Post. We really started at the bottom. But we navigated life as freshmen. Hayden got to work. He built out our office. He put a lot of time and attention into personnel because personnel, as we all know, is policy. The first thing he did--and this is a good trait I think for all of our leaders to have--is all of the staffers, he required everybody to go and visit the district that we represent, to get to know the people, to remember who sent them there and why. It was such an important way to kind of set the pace for how our office would be run. He also navigated my elections. I became chair of the Republican Study Committee in my second term and then became vice chair of the House Republican Conference the third and fourth term. But while he was doing all of that here, he was also running the campaigns back home every 2 years. We all know what a burden that is. It is a rare person who can do policy and politics, and he was also one of the youngest chiefs on the Hill. But we did all of that, and we got through it. Then the biggest challenge of our lives came next, and everybody, you know, remembers what happened about 2\1/2\ years ago now. I was nominated by my colleagues for this job in an unexpected race for Speaker, and Hayden was, in that operation, the chief. He was my whip. He was my right hand, all in one, all-hands-on-deck. My staff refers to that as building a plane as we are flying it. It was like launching a 747 with no wings or an engine. You know, we had to put it all together. There was no playbook for it. It is important to remember that nothing like that had ever happened in this institution, and it took a lot of fortitude to do it, and this guy was responsible for it. {time} 1650 The average tenure before somebody is Speaker of the House is 16 years. We had only been here 6.8 years, and we had no playbook designed at all. So he set up an entire organization--the political, the legislative, the staffing infrastructure, all of that--in a matter of just a couple of weeks, and it was amazing. There was no shortage of intrigue surrounding this time in our lives, but what is not recognized enough--and this is true for all of us--is the dedication and the sacrifice of our teams, especially those at the top of your organization, and how much of their lives they give to this, stewarding and helping us to steward this sacred institution. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Hayden's lovely wife. She is here tonight. Jennifer is up in the balcony up here, and their little one--yes--Brody. There they are. Look, it is impossible--I will just say this on behalf of all of the families of all of the staff who serve us. We owe an eternal debt of gratitude to these folks. It is impossible to overstate their sacrifice--late nights, long hours, high stakes, and they give their all, and they don't get paid enough for that. We all know it. We couldn't run the operation without them, but we are grateful to their families, to Brody and Jen, for their selflessness and patience and sharing their dad and husband with us these many years. So I will close with this. I am going to say that this young man-- this country boy from Minden, Louisiana; political whiz kid who envisioned my path before I did; loyal friend, who has been a constant throughout every season of our journey--there are only a handful of people in Washington--you all know--that you can really, really, truly trust completely, and Hayden has been one of those people for me. I pray that you have somebody just like that. I know you all do. I hope you treasure them. Even before the Speakership, before the Cannon office that was split in the middle by a women's restroom, before the apartment office campaign above the radio store, it was Hayden who built this ship from the ground up, and I will always be grateful for that. We are going to miss him. We are going to have a lot of tough fights. He has been with us for all those fights along the way, and he has earned some downtime. I am really grateful that he, Jen, and Brody are going to get that. I wish him the best. I thank the Members for indulging me. God bless you in your next chapter, my friend. God bless. ____________________