MILWAUKEE — The Senate GOP leadership race is far from the focus at the Republican convention. But a gathering of GOP delegates, donors and lawmakers of this size is a unique opportunity for the three candidates to build support for their bid to succeed Mitch McConnell.
As we’ve noted throughout our coverage of this contest, fundraising prowess is a critical element of their pitches.
But senators who will be voting in the secret-ballot election in late November are also thoroughly examining the candidates’ legislative records — and how those records square with their promises to empower individual senators and return to regular order. Meanwhile, McConnell has been urging Republicans privately to resist the urge to weaken the leader position.
So we wanted to use the occasion of the convention to delve into these proposals and how the leader hopefuls are selling them. All three candidates are in Milwaukee this week.
John Thune: The Senate minority whip is finishing up a six-year, term-limited tenure as the conference’s No. 2 leader and chief vote-counter.
Thune wants to “democratize” the conference. That means returning the legislative sausage-making process to the committee level and allowing an open amendment process on the floor.
If Thune wins, he’d be just the second party leader to head into the job with two full terms of standing committee chairmanships in the modern era. As chair of the Commerce Committee, Thune shepherded through major legislation on everything from preventing sex trafficking to landmark overhauls of the TSA and FAA.
In an interview here, Thune said his experience atop Commerce was a model for how the Senate should operate.
Empowering individual senators hasn’t always worked out well for Republicans, though. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) was the lead GOP negotiator in the bipartisan border talks earlier this year. McConnell and Thune argued it was a rare opportunity to force Democrats to accept tough border restrictions.
When it collapsed — prompted by former President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson — Democrats used the issue to hammer Republicans for months.
Thune noted that since Democrats have the majority, Republicans were forced to operate under their terms. He would’ve preferred a normal committee process rather than private negotiations.
“In the majority, obviously, you can use committees to originate bills and have a more regular order process,” Thune said. “That was an unusual set of circumstances and obviously it didn’t get an outcome.”
John Cornyn: The Texas Republican, whose pitch for the leader job includes similar pledges on empowering the rank-and-file, preceded Thune as whip.
During that time, Cornyn helped lead the confirmations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, two of the most difficult floor efforts in recent memory. The Gorsuch confirmation even required a Senate rules change on Supreme Court nominations.
And Cornyn helped oversee passage of the Trump-era tax cuts, the former president’s top legislative achievement.
But his tenure also included the collapse of Republicans’ efforts to repeal Obamacare. The death knell came when the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted no. It was a setback for congressional Republicans while they had unified control of Washington during Trump’s first two years in office.
Cornyn wasn’t available for an interview for this story.
Rick Scott: The Florida Republican was the only lawmaker of the three running to speak on the convention stage, but Scott didn’t focus on his leadership bid. Scott told us here that “people want change.”
Indeed, Scott is proposing perhaps the most significant overhaul of the conference. Scott says the party’s leader should only act based on the will of the majority of the conference, which resonates with many senators.
Yet Scott also has to focus on his own reelection to the Senate this year, and his legislative record is a lot thinner than those of Thune and Cornyn.
