Ellmers, Renee, 1964-

Renee Jacisin Ellmers (born February 9, 1964) is an American nurse, healthcare director, and politician. A member of the Republican Party, she served as the U.S. Representative for North Carolina's 2nd congressional district from 2011 to 2017.

Born Renee Jacisin in Ironwood, Michigan, her family moved to Madison Heights, Michigan when she was a child. After graduating from Madison High School, she was hired as a medical assistant, using her wages to pay tuition at nearby Oakland University. She graduated with a BS in nursing in 1990. She and her husband Brent Ellmers, whom she had met working at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, moved to North Carolina in 1998. There, Renee Ellmers was clinical director of the Trinity Wound Care Center in Dunn. She made the jump from community activism into politics in response to the effort by Congress and the Barack Obama administration to overhaul the nation’s health insurance system in 2009 and 2010 with the Affordable Care Act. Ellmers easily won the Republican primary and narrowly bested seven-term Democratic incumbent Bob Etheridge.

As a freshman in the 112th Congress (2011–2013), Ellmers attacked the Affordable Care Act for provisions she believed would hurt smaller health care providers. She submitted a number of bills that sought to cut spending on foreign aid, lower taxes on imports like tungsten and other chemicals, and prohibit tolls on interstate highways in North Carolina. Her main piece of legislation in the 112th Congress was the Creating Jobs Through Small Business Innovation Act of 2011, which authorized the renewal of both the Small Business Innovation Research program and the Small Business Technology Transfer program.

In the 113th Congress (2013–2015), Ellmers took a seat on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. Her most popular measure was the Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2013, which gathered a bipartisan coalition of 123 cosponsors. Her legislative agenda included bills that addressed a range of health care issues, everything from information technology, vaccines, eating disorders, medical records, disposable medical technology, “loan repayment programs” at the National Institutes of Health, and prosthetic limbs. Despite her hard line on the ACA, Ellmers worked with a Democratic colleague from North Carolina to help people on Medicare access the latest in medical technology.

In 2016 federal courts forced North Carolina to redraw its congressional map, and in the process, a substantial chunk of voters were moved from the Thirteenth District into Ellmers’s Second District. As a result, the incumbent from the Thirteenth District, George Holding, opted to challenge Ellmers in the nearby Second. Ellmers, who was an early supporter of Donald J. Trump in the Republican presidential primary and who accepted Trump’s endorsement of her own candidacy, was criticized for not being conservative enough in Congress. Ellmers lost to Holding by roughly 30 percent in the Republican primary.

In 2017, Ellmers joined the Department of Health and Human Services as the director of region four based in Atlanta, Georgia. Early in 2019, Ellmers announced her candidacy for lieutenant governor of North Carolina. Ellmers placed fifth in the Republican primary election.