Kentucky House of Representatives

In 2000, Comer was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives at the age of 27 following the retirement of incumbent Billy Polston. Comer defeated Polston's wife Donnie for the Republican nomination.^[9][10]

Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture

In 2011, Comer ran for agriculture commissioner. The incumbent, Richie Farmer, was term-limited.^[11] In the election, Comer was the only Republican to win election to a statewide executive office,^[12] and worked with a team of Democratic officials and under a Democratic governor.^[13] He had the highest percentage of the vote of any candidate on the ballot, and raised $606,766 to his opponent's $204,287.^[14] He took office in January 2012. One of Comer's first actions in office was to team up with Democratic Auditor Adam Edelen to investigate his Republican predecessor's ethics while in office.^[15]

That year Comer, became chair of the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission,^[16] and shortly after taking office, he called the legalization of industrialized hemp his top priority,^[17][18] and was "instrumental in getting the hemp industry up and running",^[19] including by founding several pilot programs^[20] in an effort to restart Kentucky's industrial hemp industry. He also filed suit against the DEA, which resulted in the DEA allowing hemp seeds to be delivered to Kentucky farmers for the first new crops.^[21] Between 2014 and 2015, Kentucky's hemp crops grew from 33 to 1,700 acres.^[22] Comer also advocated for national hemp deregulation.^[23]

Comer founded the Kentucky Proud Farm to Campus program,^[24] and created a mobile science centers program for primary and secondary school students to learn about agricultural sciences.^[25]

2015 gubernatorial election

On August 2, 2014, during the annual Fancy Farm picnic, Comer announced he would seek the Republican nomination for governor of Kentucky in the 2015 election.^[26] His running mate was State Senator Christian McDaniel.^[27] At the conclusion of voting in the May 19 election, Comer was 83 votes behind businessman Matt Bevin. The Associated Press, calling the race a "virtual tie", did not call it for either candidate. Comer refused to concede and said he would request a recanvass.^[28] The request was filed with the Kentucky Secretary of State's office on May 20, with Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes ordering the recanvass to begin at 9:00 a.m. on May 28.^[29][30] After the recanvass, Grimes announced that Bevin remained 83 votes ahead of Comer.^[31] She also said that should Comer want a full recount, it would require a court order from the Franklin Circuit Court.^[32] On May 29, Comer announced he would not request a recount and conceded the nomination to Bevin.^[33]

Elections

Tenure

During his first few months in office, Comer held several town hall meetings, where he discussed the Congress's early platform.^[37] He partnered with Murray State University to form the Congressman James Comer Congressional Agriculture Fellowship program,^[38] and advocated for agricultural legislation reform.^[39] He criticized the regulatory policies of Barack Obama,^[40] and supported the early domestic policies and actions of President Donald Trump. Comer is a social conservative on same-sex marriage and abortion, which means he is in opposition to both.^[41] He believes the trade embargo on Cuba should be lifted.^[42]

Comer voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.^[43] After the bill passed, he said: "I am proud to support this critical part of President Trump's pro-growth agenda that will fulfill this promise to the American people who have struggled under the weight of Washington bureaucrats for far too long."^[44]

Comer was an original cosponsor of the Hemp Farming Act, which legalized hemp nationwide and removed federal regulations on the crop.^[45] The bill was later included in the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 and signed into law by President Trump on December 20, 2018.^[46] Comer was a member of the conference committee that negotiated its final version.^[47]

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Comer and Representative Suzanne Bonamici introduced legislation that would protect access to school lunches for school districts throughout the country that had to close because of the pandemic.^[48] The COVID-19 Child Nutrition Response Act allows the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to waive requirements for children to gather at schools for school officials and food service personnel to distribute reimbursable, nutritious meals. It also gives local school officials discretion over substitutions for meal components if supply or procurement is disrupted.^[49] When introducing the bill, Comer said, "this bill is a critical step toward ensuring that our students maintain access to the school meals they rely on for their health and well-being".^[48] After it cleared the House and Senate, President Trump signed the legislation into law on March 18.^[49]

After the 2022 United States House of Representatives election resulted in a House Republican majority, Comer said that the House Oversight Committee's "focus in this next Congress" would be to investigate President Joe Biden, particularly his "relationship with his family's foreign partners and whether he is a president who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars and influence".^[50]

After Comer became chair of the Oversight Committee, he responded in January 2023 to the Joe Biden classified documents incident by calling for visitor logs for Biden's residence, where Biden's lawyers found some classified documents from his vice presidency; the same day, Comer said that he would not call for visitor logs for Trump's residence Mar-a-Lago, where an FBI search found classified documents from Trump's presidency despite Trump's lawyers' claim that no such documents were there.^[51] Comer declared he would investigate Biden because Biden "hasn't been investigated", adding: "there have been so many investigations of President Trump. I don't feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump".^[52] When Comer told Fox TV's Sean Hannity, "You look at how Donald Trump is treated. He had documents in one location behind a locked door," Florida Democratic congressman Jared Moskowitz aired previously publicly widely distributed footage of large quantities boxes of classified and confidential documents in Mar-a-Lago were haphazardly stored in various places including an unlocked bathroom and on a theater stage.^[53] In March 2023, Comer confirmed that he had ended a House investigation into Trump's financial dealings, in which Trump's former accounting company, Mazars USA, had been turning over documents as part of a court-supervised settlement; the documents provided information on how foreign governments patronized the Trump International Hotel. Comer said he "didn’t even know who or what Mazars was" and that he was instead investigating "money the Bidens received from China".^[54]

When CNN asked Comer in April 2023 whether his investigation had found "anything illegal while [Joe Biden] was actually in office", he replied: "we found a lot that's certainly unethical … We found a lot that should be illegal. The line is blurry as to what is legal and not legal with respect to family influence-peddling."^[55][56] On September 12, 2023, Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, and announced that he had chosen Comer to head the inquiry.^[57]

Comer discussed the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in October 2023, stating that "because we have so many documents, and we can bring these people in for [private] depositions or [public] committee hearings, whichever they choose".^[58] After Biden's son Hunter was subpoenaed to testify, Hunter preferred to testify publicly instead of privately, to avoid misrepresentations of the proceedings, stated Hunter's lawyer; Comer responded that the subpoenas for a private deposition were "not mere suggestions open to [Hunter] Biden's interpretation or preference".^[58]

Committee assignments

For the 118th Congress:^[59]

• Committee on Education and the Workforce
  • Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions
  • Subcommittee on Workforce Protections
• Committee on Oversight and Accountability (Chair)
  • As Chair of the committee, Rep. Comer is entitled to sit as an ex officio member in all subcommittee meetings, per the committee's rules.

Caucus memberships

• Second Amendment Caucus
• Republican Study Committee^[60]
• Congressional Coalition on Adoption^[61]

Health care

Comer supports the repeal of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare").^[62]

Economic issues

In 2016 Comer called the Obama administration's final budget a "disaster in the making".^{[citation needed]} In 2017, he voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was estimated to add $1.49 trillion to the national debt.^[63]

Comer opposes paid parental leave for federal workers.^[64]

Immigration

Comer opposes amnesty and sanctuary cities. He supports Executive Order 13767, the building of a wall along the Mexico–U.S. border.^[62]

Abortion

Comer is anti-abortion.^[62]

Marijuana

Comer supports declassifying marijuana as a Schedule 1 narcotic and growing hemp. In December 2017, he said there is "simply not enough support for medical marijuana legalization across the board".^[65]

LGBT rights

Comer opposes same-sex marriage.^[62] He also opposes banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and voted against the Equality Act in 2019.^[66][67] Comer voted against the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022.^[68]

Foreign policy

In June 2021, Comer was one of 49 House Republicans to vote to repeal the AUMF against Iraq.^[69][70]

In 2023, Comer was among 47 Republicans to vote in favor of H.Con.Res. 21 which directed President Joe Biden to remove U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days.^[71][72]

Comer voted to provide Israel with support following 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.^[73][74]