Pete Stauber

In 1990, Stauber signed a multi-year contract with the Detroit Red Wings.[11] The Florida Panthers selected him from the Red Wings in the 1993 NHL Expansion Draft.[12]

Stauber and his brothers, John, Jamie, Bill, Dan, and Robb, all played hockey.[13][6] Together they run an annual Stauber Brothers Military Heroes Hockey Camp, a summer program for children with parents in the military.[14] The six are co-owners of the Duluth Hockey Company, which began as a sporting goods retailer but since 2015 has specialized in hockey-related merchandise.[15][16]

Stauber served on the Hermantown City Council for eight years.[17] From 2013 to 2019, he served as a member of the St. Louis County, Minnesota Commission, which includes Duluth.

A group of Ojibwe tribes from Stauber's district rebuked him for his attempts to block President Joe Biden’s nomination of Deb Haaland as United States Secretary of the Interior. The Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes also complained about his actions. A member of the House subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples, Stauber cited Haaland′s support of the Green New Deal and opposition to oil drilling. As a member of the House, he will not vote on the nomination.[18]

In June 2018, Donald Trump campaigned for Stauber in his run for U.S. Representative, making his first visit to Minnesota as president and attending his first rally to support a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in the 2018 general election, visiting Stauber's hometown of Duluth.[19][20]

The 8th district had an open seat in a previously Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL)-held district where the last two elections were close.[20][21][22] Partisan funders on both sides of the aisle reserved "millions" of dollars for advertising in a race widely regarded as a potential Republican pickup of a seat that had been held since 2013 by Rick Nolan.[23] In November, Stauber defeated the DFL nominee, former Nolan aide Joe Radinovich, to become only the fifth person to represent the district in 71 years, and the second Republican to do so. He won primarily by running up his margins in the district's more conservative western portion.

During his 2018 campaign, Stauber ran on a policy of allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, becoming only one of a handful of Republicans to endorse what was primarily a progressive idea.[24] Stauber has since walked back from his campaign pledge.[24]

Stauber was reelected on November 4, 2020, defeating DFL nominee Quinn Nystrom. In December 2020, he filed a motion to support the "Texas Lawsuit" described as a "seditious abuse of the judicial process" and aimed at invalidating millions of votes in various swing states. The Duluth News Tribune, which had endorsed Stauber, and many other local officials sharply criticized him for the ploy in an open letter to Stauber.[25]

According to the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, Stauber held a Bipartisan Index Score of 0.7 in the 116th United States Congress for 2019, which placed him 64th out of 435 members.[26] Based on FiveThirtyEight's congressional vote tracker at ABC News, Stauber voted with Trump's stated public policy positions 90.4% of the time,[27] which ranked him average in the 116th United States Congress when predictive scoring (district partisanship and voting record) is used.[28]

On September 30, 2020, Stauber hosted Trump in a visit to his district, attending a rally of about 3,000 people at the Duluth International Airport. Along with two of his Minnesota Republican House colleagues, Stauber rode with Trump on Air Force One.[29] After it was determined that Stauber had interacted with people who tested positive for COVID-19 in Washington D.C., including Trump, Stauber took a Delta flight in violation of Delta's rules, potentially exposing the other passengers to the virus.[30]

In December 2020, Stauber was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated[31] incumbent Donald Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.[32][33][34]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement that called signing the amicus brief an act of "election subversion." She also reprimanded Stauber and the other House members who supported the lawsuit: "The 126 Republican Members that signed onto this lawsuit brought dishonor to the House. Instead of upholding their oath to support and defend the Constitution, they chose to subvert the Constitution and undermine public trust in our sacred democratic institutions."[35][36] New Jersey Representative Bill Pascrell, citing section three of the 14th Amendment, called for Pelosi to not seat Stauber and the other Republicans who signed the brief supporting the suit, arguing that "the text of the 14th Amendment expressly forbids Members of Congress from engaging in rebellion against the United States. Trying to overturn a democratic election and install a dictator seems like a pretty clear example of that."[37]

• House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
  • Subcommittee on Highways and Transit
  • Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials
  • Subcommittee on Aviation
• Committee on Small Business
  • Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce(Ranking Member)
  • Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access

• Problem Solvers Caucus
• Law Enforcement Caucus
• Congressional Steel Caucus
• Congressional Western Caucus
• Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation