Thanks to gerrymandered districts and all-consuming fundraising schedules, most members of the House can keep their seats for as long as they want them. More than a dozen retire every two years, part of the natural turnover of Congress. But as the Brookings Institution noted, the Republicans who are departing voluntarily this year are leaving much sooner than typical retiring lawmakers.

The GOP class of 2010 had plenty of career politicians—eager city council members, small-town mayors, and state legislators who were moving up the electoral ladder by running for the U.S. House. But the group was known for the many men and women who had never served in elective office before, those who left their jobs as farmers, car dealers, farmers, military officers, sheriffs, and radio hosts—even as a funeral director—to come to Washington. And by and large, these are the novice lawmakers who decided after just five years that they’ve had enough of Congress.

Here are the stories of four of them: Richard Hanna, who started his own construction business in upstate New York; Scott Rigell, a car dealer from Virginia; Reid Ribble, who ran his family’s roofing business in Wisconsin; and Rich Nugent, a veteran Florida sheriff. Each of them said they arrived in Congress with high expectations, hoping to right the fiscal ship and bring an outsider’s perspective to Washington. Like many first-time politicians, they imposed term limits on themselves—four terms in the case of Ribble and five or six for the others. But while many lawmakers ignore those campaign pledges and stay much longer than they promised, each of these four is doing the opposite: They’re returning home earlier than planned. Sure, they want to get back to their families, but each of them leaves, to varying degrees, discouraged if not downright saddened—at the snail's pace of progress in Congress, at a president who wouldn’t compromise, at a party that lurched too far to the right, or in one case, at all of those things.

“I guess we were all probably naïve, those of us that never served in the state legislature,” Nugent told me. “We were naïve to how you get things done, or how quickly or not quickly you can move things.”

Richard Hanna

By his own description, Richard Hanna is not flashy. “I’m a grind-away guy,” he says. And he’s certainly not the most outspoken member of the 2010 Republican class. Far from it.

Just don’t get him started on his disenchantment with the Republican Party, the 2016 presidential campaign, and Congress in general. In the course of a 30-minute interview, Hanna used the following words: “Embarrassing,” “ashamed,” “disappointed,” “uncomfortable,” “callous,” and “immoral.”

The 65-year-old owned a construction company in upstate New York before he decided to run for Congress. He figured he’d finally put the economics and political-science degree he earned decades ago in college to some use. “I woke up one day and said to my wife, ‘I think I’ll run for Congress,’” Hanna recalled. “And she said, ‘Shut up and go to sleep.’”