A group of conservative Republican senators is refusing to let the party simply rubber-stamp its leadership after last week’s midterm losses.
On Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin sent a letter to Senate Republican Conference Chair Tom Cotton of Arkansas asking that Tuesday morning’s leadership elections be delayed. The letter carried the five signatures that conference rules require to call a special meeting: Johnson, Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida, John Kennedy of Louisiana, and Ted Budd of North Carolina, according to Fox News Digital and CQ Roll Call.
“Political malpractice”
“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat, and there are multiple reasons for it,” Johnson wrote. “We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to what we can do to improve the outcome in 2028.”
“Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice,” the letter continued. “It is certainly not the way leadership elections should be conducted in the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
The group is asking that when the elections were set to begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday, senators instead hold a full conference discussion and wait to vote until they hear from leadership candidates about how they would run the conference and how they plan to counter what the letter calls “the emboldened Democrats.”
Lee: “The cart before the horse”
“We first need to digest what happened last week and make plans to move forward,” Lee posted on X. “Turning to leadership elections Tuesday morning would put the cart before the horse.”
Lee also told the Deseret News that Republicans “should not rush into leadership elections while two races (and along with them, the composition of our conference) remain unresolved,” a reference to the still-uncalled Senate contests in Alaska and Mississippi.
The pressure goes beyond the five signers. Sens. Jim Banks of Indiana and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania have also called for a delay. “A week ago, we had the worst election results in decades,” McCormick wrote on X, adding that he didn’t believe the conference should move to leadership elections until it had “digested and debated the lessons of the midterms.”
Thune isn’t budging
Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota is expected to seek another term as the top Senate Republican, and no challenger has emerged publicly. Scott, who has run for leader twice before, said on Fox News that he doesn’t want to run again.
Thune said Monday that he doesn’t think a delay “solves anything,” according to Semafor, though he said the conference needs a “robust conversation about where we go from here.”
Thune has faced heat from the conservative base for refusing to change Senate rules to pass the SAVE America Act, the voter ID bill that has stalled in the Senate. President Trump has publicly called on him to fire the Senate parliamentarian to get the bill passed with a simple majority. Scott wants a commitment to pass the GOP’s voter ID legislation, Semafor reported.
What happens Tuesday
Democrats flipped the Senate with at least 54 seats, and that number could grow depending on Alaska and Mississippi. Several Senate GOP aides told CQ Roll Call they expect a Tuesday discussion won’t do much to slow things down and that the leadership elections will still take place that day. A similar delay effort was shut down in 2022.
Whether it changes the outcome or not, the message from Johnson, Lee, Scott, Kennedy, and Budd is clear: after a beating like last week’s, they don’t want business as usual.