2009, she became vice chair of the House Republican Conference, and served until 2012, when she was succeeded by Lynn Jenkins. McMorris Rodgers won the 2010 general election with 150,681 votes (64%), to Democratic nominee Daryl Romeyn's 85,686 (36%). Romeyn spent only $2,320, against McMorris Rodgers's $1,453,240. On November 14, 2012, she defeated Representative Tom Price to become chair of the House Republican Conference. In the 2012 general election, McMorris Rodgers defeated Democratic nominee Rich Cowan, 191,066 votes (61.9%) to 117,512 (38.9%). McMorris Rodgers sponsored legislation that would speed the licensing process for dams and promote energy production. According to a Department of Energy study, retrofitting the largest 100 dams in the country could produce enough power for an additional 3.2 million homes. The legislation reached President Obama's desk without a single dissenter on Capitol Hill. In January 2014, it was announced that McMorris Rodgers would give the Republican response to President Barack Obama's 2014 State of the Union Address. House Speaker John Boehner and Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell made the decision. McMorris Rodgers is the 12th woman to give the response, and the fifth female Republican, but only the third Republican to do so alone, after New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman in 1995 and the Spanish response by Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the most senior female Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, in 2011. Ros-Lehtinen also gave the Spanish response that year, which was largely a translation of McMorris Rogers' remarks. In 2014, the Office of Congressional Ethics recommended that the United States House Committee on Ethics initiate a probe into allegations by a former McMorris Rodgers staff member that McMorris Rodgers had improperly mixed campaign money and official funds to help win the 2012 GOP leadership race against Price. McMorris Rodgers denied the allegations. In September 2015, Brett O'Donnell, who worked for McMorris Rodgers, pleaded guilty to lying to House ethics investigators about how much campaign work he did while being paid by lawmakers' office accounts, becoming the first person ever to be convicted of lying to the House Office of Congressional Ethics. The OCE found that McMorris Rodgers improperly used campaign funds to pay O'Donnell for help in her congressional office, and improperly held a debate prep session in her congressional office. A lawyer for McMorris Rodgers denied that campaign and official resources had ever been improperly mixed. The House Ethics Committee did not