Profiles of House Republican Leaders

Incoming House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, second from right, talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington Friday, Nov. 17, 2006, after being elected House Republican leader for the upcoming 110th Congress. From left are: incoming Republican Conference Vice Chair Rep. Kay Granger, R-Tex., incoming Deputy Whip Eric Cantor of Va., Boehner and GOP Conference Chairman, Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook) (Dennis Cook - AP)

-- Profiles of House Republican leaders elected Friday for the next Congress:

Minority Leader: John Boehner, R-Ohio. Boehner, 56, won election in February 2006 as House majority leader, promising a steady hand and reform for Republicans tinged by election-year scandal. Boehner was one of the engineers of the GOP takeover of the House in 1994 but was booted from the GOP leadership four years later after the party suffered losses in the 1998 midterm elections. Once a vehement partisan, Boehner worked as the Education Committee's chairman with liberal Democrats including Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep. George Miller of California to pass President Bush's No Child Left Behind education bill in 2001.

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Minority Whip: Roy Blunt, R-Mo. Blunt's job is to persuade GOP members to vote the party line _ and he won a huge victory when the Central American Free Trade Agreement passed by two votes after he staved off Republican defections and kept the vote open to round up the necessary votes. Blunt, 56, was mentored by former Texas Rep. Tom DeLay and was appointed by Speaker Dennis Hastert to temporarily fill DeLay's shoes as majority leader when DeLay was indicted on charges of laundering campaign money. Blunt was defeated months later by Boehner when the majority leader's job came up for election. While Blunt is as conservative as DeLay, he has a softer approach in forging consensus within the party.

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Republican Conference chairman: Adam Putnam, R-Fla. Putnam, 32, is boyish in appearance. While in Congress for only six years, he has risen fast in the GOP hierarchy. He's a member of the Rules Committee, where seats are reserved for leadership loyalists. Last February colleagues elected him House Republican Policy Committee chairman, a position once held by Vice President Dick Cheney. Speaker Dennis Hastert chose Putnam to orchestrate grassroots hearings across the country last summer to highlight House Republicans' opposition to a Senate immigration bill that would put illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.

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Republican Congressional Campaign Committee chairman: Tom Cole, R-Okla., was in the House for only two years before he was made a deputy whip in 2004. As head of House Republicans' campaign operation, he will have one of the most high-profile jobs going into the 2008 election, in charge of finding candidates and raising money to regain a GOP majority lost in last week's election. Cole, 57, is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and the only American Indian now in Congress.