Herron was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1997 federal election as a candidate of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He was reelected in the 2000 election. Herron was one of a handful of new Progressive Conservative "young Turk" parliamentarians - along with Scott Brison, André Bachand, and Peter MacKay - considered the youthful leadership material that would restore the ailing Tories to their glory days. After Progressive Conservative leaderJean Charest resigned in April 1998 to lead Quebec Federalists as leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Herron and fellow MP Jim Jones met with Stephen Harper to explore Harper's interest in the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party. Herron concluded that there was a lack of alignment between the two on a series of public policy matters, and later teamed with Scott Brison to support Joe Clark's candidacy and his subsequent return as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Herron was criticized following the 2003 PC leadership election when he abandoned the campaign of Scott Brison to support Peter MacKay before the second ballot. Brison was dropped from the voting when he won just three votes fewer than Jim Prentice on the second ballot. Many blamed this loss on Herron and a handful of his riding delegates who followed him to the MacKay camp. Herron, often described as a Red Tory for his progressive leanings on social issues, was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party until December 2003; he did not support its merger with the Canadian Alliance into the Conservative Party of Canada in 2003, and he refused to join the new party. On February 6, 2004, he announced that he would sit for the remainder of the Parliamentary session as an "independent Progressive Conservative", and that he would run in the 2004 election as a candidate for the Liberal Party of Canada. One of Herron's last official acts as a sitting MP was his deliverance of the "Progressive Conservative party caucus" tribute to retiring party leaderJoe Clark in May 2004. Herron lost his seat in the 2004 election to Conservative Party candidate Rob Moore.
