Following the indictment of Tom DeLay on September 28, 2005, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert asked Dreier to assume temporarily the position of House Majority Leader, as Dreier had consistently adhered to the views of the Republican leadership on many issues and would have been willing to relinquish the title immediately should DeLay have been able to return to the Majority Leader position. However, a conference of rank-and-file Republican representatives disapproved of the choice of Dreier largely because many conservative members believed that Dreier was too politically moderate. According to Dreier spokeswoman Jo Maney, Dreier did not seek the temporary Majority Leader position because he "would have had to give up his chairmanship of the Rules Committee to move to another position, and that's not something that he wanted to do".