WASHINGTON ― Senate Minority Whip John Thune was elected the next Senate Republican leader on Wednesday, ensuring Sen. Mitch McConnell’s right-hand man will lead the new GOP majority as President-elect Donald Trump begins his second White House term next year.
Thune beat his colleagues John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida in an internal party vote.
A longtime member of the GOP leadership team who was first elected in 2004, Thune, 63, is an establishment figure who is likely to continue McConnell’s focus on confirming judges and advancing a traditional conservative platform: tax cuts, defense spending and deregulation.
The mild-mannered South Dakotan recently made efforts to patch up what has been a complicated relationship with Trump. In 2020, he rebuked Trump for seeking to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election. And in 2016, the senator called on Trump to quit his bid for the White House after the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted of sexual assault. He’s since embraced Trump and vowed to fully implement his agenda in Congress, however.
“We have an ambitious agenda, and it will take all of us ― each and every Republican ― working together with President Trump’s leadership to achieve it,” Thune wrote in an opinion piece published Tuesday by Fox News. “If we don’t successfully execute on our mandate, we risk losing the coalition that swept Republicans into office up and down the ballot.”
Cornyn, 72, served as Senate GOP whip during Trump’s first two years in the White House when Republicans last controlled all three branches of government. His pitch to his colleagues included his work helping shepherd Trump’s 2017 tax cuts into law and his strong ability to fundraise on behalf of the party. His supporters argued he’s closer to Trump than Thune, spending time with the former president in recent weeks on the campaign trail.
Though Thune and Cornyn were viewed as nearly identical candidates with perhaps some stylistic differences, Scott had the support of the more conservative wing of the party and top MAGA voices, including billionaire Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tucker Carlson. But an online campaign in support of the 71-year-old Florida Republican may have backfired in the closing days of the race. Republican senators and aides were not amused when Scott’s supporters urged voters to light up phone lines in GOP Senate offices. One Republican senator even saw protesters rally outside her home state office in support of Scott.
“They’re trying to bully us. That’s not how these elections work,” an unnamed GOP senator complained to Punchbowl News.
Scott may have been the candidate most closely aligned with Trump, but his record in the Senate could have given some senators pause. He served as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2022 campaign cycle, when Republicans not only failed to capture a majority but actually lost seats. Some Republicans privately grumbled that his hands-off approach to candidate recruitment ― allowing Trump to endorse weak candidates in several races ― hurt their performance that year.
Over the weekend, Trump pressured all three candidates to sidestep regular Senate order, if necessary, to allow him to fill his Cabinet quickly when the chamber is on recess, bypassing a confirmation vote. All three senators quickly suggested that they might be willing to reconsider the practice despite longstanding GOP opposition to so-called recess appointments since a 2014 Supreme Court ruling limited the president’s power to do so.
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All three candidates also promised to be more transparent in terms of making decision and that they would give senators more power to get their priorities to the floor. Rank-and-file members have for years complained about the way McConnell ran the conference, including by hoarding information and power on big-ticket legislative items and by deploying millions of dollars in outside resources in support of favored Senate candidates.
The Kentucky senator, who will step down as party leader at the end of the year after 19 years and serve out the remainder of his term, warned earlier this year that decentralizing the role of party leader would make the Senate more like the House, where far-right Republican demands weakened the speakership and fueled chaos last year.