This is part of a recurring series on what former members of Congress are doing in their post-congressional careers.
For 10 years, Rodney Davis’ bosses were the people of the 13th District of Illinois. But on a recent September day in Taylorville, Ill., it appeared Davis now reported to an imperious ball of fur named Finnegan, a “shorkie” — half Yorkie, half Shih Tzu.
“Hey, get over here … sorry, the dog’s in the neighbor’s yard,” Davis said from his garage office, interrupting a Zoom call to chase after the pup and, in the process, revealing that he was wearing shorts with his shirt and tie.
“He’s a shit,” Davis said, returning to his seat. “Thinks it’s funny to run in the neighbor’s yard and then run from dad.”
Perched happily on Davis’ lap, Finnegan appeared remorseless.
Davis, 55, left Congress two years ago. Now, he’s the head of government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a job that enables him to mix it up with many of the same people he worked with on Capitol Hill.
But the job gives him a little more personal autonomy than he had when his days were filled with markups, floor votes and fundraising calls, or for the 16 years before that, when he worked for former Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill.
Hence the garage.
Hence the shorts (“I’m only Zooming from the top,” he shrugs).
Hence the dog.
“It was an easy transition for me,” Davis said of his departure from Congress, which was spurred by a 2022 primary loss to Mary Miller after the two lawmakers’ districts were merged during congressional redistricting.
Because he lost the primary early that year, “I had time to kind of create that off-ramp and prepare for what was next,” he said. The day after he lost, he talked to a headhunter about what to do next.
He started off as a managing director for Cozen O’Connor. One year in, the chamber recruited him. For Davis, a pro-business, moderate Republican, it was a solid fit.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “When I took my first job on Jan. 3 of 2023, it was the first time I’ve been in the private sector since I worked for my dad’s fast food restaurant while I was in college.”
Now, he splits his time between his hometown in central Illinois; Washington, where he shares a townhouse with former Rep. Jeff Denham of California; and Jupiter, Fla. Fortuitously, he has a grown child near each location: a daughter in Chicago, a son who works for Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., and a son who is a nurse in Jupiter.
“Wherever I’m at, I usually get to see one of my kids, which is nice,” he said.
Two years out of Congress, Davis rarely regrets not being there. But an exception occurred days after he left office, when his friend, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, faced 15 rounds of votes before tenuously hanging on to his gavel.
It was wildly frustrating for Davis, who wanted to advocate for his friend.
“For me, who you know had just left, I’m sitting there thinking, ‘I know I could make a difference if I was there.’ I always believed I could figure out a way to talk some common sense into some of my colleagues, to maybe change the outcome of where they were at. … You know, that’s when I missed it the most.”
That approach echoed Davis’ style in Congress. Once the ranking member of the House Administration Committee, Davis used his experience as a staffer to solve problems, serving on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress and approaching his colleagues with a friendly, often self-deprecating style.
He had an unspoken agreement with former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat; both would “forget” time limits to an extent when one was holding the gavel and the other was speaking at hearings. He asked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., how she wanted to be addressed. “Call me Alex,” she said, so he did.
And he understood, instinctively, that behind all the performance art of politics was humanity.
“I’m a partisan,” he said. “I’m a proud Republican. I have no qualms telling anybody that and giving my opinion. But I also found it odd that in today’s environment that … solutions aren’t valued as much.”
Part of that, he acknowledges, is because redistricting has created more polarized districts.
“We just don’t have as many competitive districts, and if you don’t have competitive districts, you’re going to elect more partisan individuals that care about the party stuff more than they do about government,” he said.
Still, he said, those lawmakers have constituents, too.
“Congress is really a conglomeration of any neighborhood in America,” he said. “You’ve got different personalities that come from different areas and, boy, some are different.”
Security concerns
On occasion, though, that polarization had horrific results.
Davis was up to bat on June 14, 2017, when a gunman opened fire on a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Va., shooting four people including then-House GOP Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who was seriously injured.
He applauds recent decisions to extend a pilot program providing up to $10,000 per month for members who want to hire personal security when they’re in their home districts. That decision was made in the aftermath of the June 2025 fatal shooting of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman.
Still, Davis wishes he had had a chance to chair the committee on House Administration, saying his experience as both a staffer and a lawmaker would’ve given him a useful point of view.
Two years removed from his time in the House, though, Davis is mostly grateful.
“I still get a chance to talk to my friends and work with them, but I never miss a flight home,” he said. “I never have to wait for votes to end or those to get extended, and I’m able to have much more of a life with my family.”
And, as another plus? He gets more time to chase Finnegan.
“Anybody that knows me knows that I have a pecking order in my house,” he said. “Dogs, and then everyone else.”
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