Rep. Andrew Garbarino will be the new chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, after the Republican steering committee voted for the New Yorker after two ballot votes Monday night.
He beat out Reps. Michael Guest of Mississippi, Carlos Giménez of Florida and Clay Higgins of Louisiana for the gavel, after Rep. Mark Green announced his retirement earlier this year. The Tennessee Republican officially resigned from Congress on Monday.
Garbarino, who focused his pitch around his background in cybersecurity policy, is likely to put the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as a top priority for the panel.
Garbarino is currently the chair of the panel’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee and will hit the ground running with a hearing Tuesday. He also chairs the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus.
