WASHINGTON, D.C. – An Ohio congressman has emerged as a major player in the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Rep. Dave Joyce, who represents Ohio’s 14th District, approaches his job much like he handled his role as prosecutor in Northeast Ohio’s Geauga County for 25 years – tuning out the noise and focusing on the nitty gritty of policy.

“I think the people at home just don’t like to hear the bickering, they don’t want to see the infighting, they just want to see us get things done,” Joyce told Spectrum News in an interview in his Capitol Hill office last week.

That approach has defined Joyce’s 10 years in Congress, and helped him amass a good deal of influence.

Joyce serves on the prominent House Appropriations Committee that decides how tax dollars are spent and chairs the subcommittee that funds the Department of Homeland Security.

As a member of the secretive Ethics Committee, Joyce is leading the House investigation into controversial New York Congressman George Santos, a fellow Republican.

And last year, Joyce was elected to chair the Republican Governance Group – or RG2 – a caucus of over 40 mostly moderate Republicans who meet weekly to discuss bills being considered by the House.

In December, the Washington Post described Joyce as the “lead moderate” in the room when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy meets with the leaders of the five so-called “families” of the House GOP, ranging from the far-right Freedom Caucus to RG2.

Is it encouraging or discouraging to be one of the lead moderates in today’s Republican Party?

“Well that’s a great question, because oftentimes I’ll take them to task and say we’re all conservative, we just happen to look at how we get the end results a little bit differently,” Joyce said.

When McCarthy endured more than a dozen rounds of voting in January to become Speaker, Joyce was one of his loudest defenders.

“Kevin deserves the opportunity because he’s been a hell of a leader throughout this process,” he said during a Jan. 5 CNN interview.

Nearly six months in, Joyce said McCarthy is doing as well as he can with a slim five-seat majority.

Joyce also shrugs off the idea that McCarthy gave away too much power when he struck a deal with ultra-conservatives to become Speaker.

“I don’t think Kevin really gave anything away. As a matter of fact, I thought the process as a whole has been healthy, up to this week,” he said.

That was in reference to last week, when those same Freedom Caucus members brought House business to a halt in protest of McCarthy’s deal with President Joe Biden to raise the borrowing limit.

But Joyce said he still believes McCarthy is right in bringing all Republican factions together.

“And that’s important,” he said. “I mean, taking everybody into consideration, everybody’s viewpoints, and realize that not everybody’s going to be happy with it, but this is how the majority works.”

Joyce prefers spending most of his time on policy.

He played a leading role in crafting the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and now focuses much of his time on the southern border, as he leads the effort to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Joyce said he wants to see more border agents hired, more detention beds built, and incomplete sections of the border wall finished.

Just last week, he introduced a bipartisan bill to prevent federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. from purchasing drones made by China.

“Whether we like to believe it or not, we are constantly under attack from nations that wish us ill. And so we have to make sure we maintain the integrity of our borders and our cybersecurity systems, and we need to make sure we have the money to do that,” Joyce said.

Politically, Joyce occupies a somewhat lonely lane in today’s GOP.

He’s a tried and true conservative, but tired of his party’s allegiance to former President Donald Trump.

“There were some great policies there, but a lot of things that happened post-the election and up to Jan. 6 were things that were not in the best interest of our country,” Joyce said. “And so I think we’re going to have a healthy field of candidates, and I think that those candidates are going to evolve as they go through the primary season. And eventually we’re going to rally around whoever wins the Republican primaries, and I just don’t foresee that as being former President Trump.”

Joyce even considered leaving office last year, after his close friend Rodney Davis, a GOP congressman from Illinois, lost his primary to a more Trumpian Republican.

But Joyce has decided to stay, focusing his energy on keeping alive at least some bipartisanship in the House and continuing to grow his influence on Capitol Hill.

“The most important thing on this Hill is your handshake and your word, because if people don’t believe you and they don’t trust you, they’re not going to work with you,” Joyce said.