He attended public schools and in 1938 graduated from Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi[1] fraternity and also earned his U.S. Army Reserve commission via the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).

His friend, Barry Goldwater, correctly predicted that Rhodes would lose; at that time, Arizona was over seventy-five percent Democratic.

[clarification needed] In 1952, Rhodes ran again, this time for Arizona's 1st congressional district, which then had all of Phoenix and surrounding Maricopa County.

Despite limited campaign funds and facing the powerful eleven-term Democratic incumbent, John Murdock, Rhodes prevailed by eight percent of the vote and was elected to the Eighty-third United States Congress.

However, House Republicans became unhappy with his strong but low-key leadership, and in 1979, he announced he would not seek re-election as leader.

He fended off a close contest for reelection in 1954 but was not seriously challenged again until 1974, when anger at Watergate held him to only 51 percent of the vote.

Rhodes' biggest two accomplishments in Congress were being the driving force behind congressional authorization of the Central Arizona Project, which provides water from the Colorado River to Arizona, and his presence at the August 7, 1974 meeting with President Richard Nixon at which he, Goldwater, and Senator Hugh Scott informed Nixon that the President no longer had enough support in Congress to prevent his impeachment and removal from office.

It is the outs -- the powerless minority -- who have the only real motivation to take a critical look at the system and determine a better way to run things."

[20] On August 14, 2003, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert awarded Rhodes one of the first Congressional Distinguished Service Medals.

Over 100 newspapers carried his obituary, and President George W. Bush delivered a statement via the White House's website.