Todd Tiahrt

Tiahrt twice sought to regain his house seat. In 2014 he ran against Mike Pompeo in the Republican primary but was defeated. Then, in 2017, after Pompeo vacated the seat to become President Donald Trump's CIA director, Tiahrt sought the Republican nomination for the special election to fill it, but came in 3rd, losing to Kansas Treasurer Ron Estes.

Tiahrt ran unsuccessfully in 2010 for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Sam Brownback. By that time, he had earned the highly coveted A+ rating of the National Rifle Association (NRA) for a fourth time. He lost to fellow Republican U.S. Representative Jerry Moran of Hays, Kansas, 50%–45%. After the primary election, Tiahrt endorsed Moran for the general election.

In their 2010 letter of appreciation on behalf of the NRA Political Victory Fund and the 50,000 NRA members in Kansas, Tiart was honored with a 4th consecutive congressional race A+ NRA rating for his contributions to the pro-gun efforts.

On November 23, 2010, Tiahrt spoke in Wichita against recent TSA security measures and how they affect citizens' privacy.

Tiahrt has opposed measures to sanction government-funded abortions. In July 2009, he drew criticism from the Kansas Democratic Party when he suggested that President Barack Obama's mother might have aborted him if she had had access to government-paid abortion services. Tiahrt posited that tax funding of abortion would "encourage women who are single parents, living below the poverty level, to have the opportunity for a free abortion. If you take that scenario and apply it to many of the great minds we have today, who would we have been deprived of? Our president grew up in those similar circumstances. If that financial incentive was in place, is it possible that his mother may have taken advantage of it?"

Tiahrt voted against the 2009 Stimulus Bill in the House and spoke against the stimulus in the House, planning to introduce an act to repeal the stimulus.

Tiart had earned the highest rating, by "voting for every pro-gun bill." This included "critical pro-gun reforms" like the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA); "legislation to expand Right-to-Carry to national parks and wildlife refuges", the Tiahrt Amendment to reform the ATF, and "legislation to restore" Second Amendment rights to Washington, DC. The A+ ranking took into consideration the letter he submitted to court briefs that he signed as a "critical friend of the court briefs" in the 2008 landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, and that Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban and requirement that lawfully-owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee. and the 2010 SC case McDonald v. Chicago which found that the right of an individual to "keep and bear arms" is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment against the states, clearing up any uncertainty left in the wake of the Heller case.

Tiahrt and his wife Vicki had three children, Jessica, John and Luke. On July 24, 2004, the Tiahrts' youngest child, sixteen year-old Luke, died of an apparent suicide by gunshot at the family home in Virginia.

Tiahrt was cited as responsible for preventing the City of Washington D.C., from spending its own disease prevention funds for HIV and Hepatitis C-fighting needle exchange programs from 1998 through 2007.

Tiahrt was elected to the Kansas State Senate in 1992. After only one term, he won the Republican nomination for the 4th Congressional District and was elected in an upset over 18-year Democratic incumbent Dan Glickman.

One factor in the win was the 1990s reapportionment, in which Hutchinson and surrounding Reno County were shifted to the "Big 1st" District. Hutchinson was replaced with more reliably Republican Montgomery County. After a tough reelection bid in 1996, Tiahrt was reelected to the U.S. House six more times with little difficulty, before his unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid in 2010.

Tiahrt was born in Vermillion, South Dakota, the son of Marcine (née Steele) and Wilbur E. Tiahrt. He attended the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology before earning a bachelor's degree from Evangel College in 1975, and received a M.B.A. from Missouri State University in 1989. He was a teacher at Kansas Newman College and Evangel College and worked for Boeing as a proposal manager.

William Todd Tiahrt (/ˈ t iː h ɑːr t / TEE -hart; born June 15, 1951) is an American politician who was the U.S. Representative for Kansas's 4th congressional district from 1995 to 2011. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district encompasses 11 counties in the south central region of the state, including the city of Wichita. He was succeeded by Republican Mike Pompeo.