A look at the candidates vying to be the next Senate majority leader
WASHINGTON — In the first seriously contested Republican leadership election in the Senate in decades Three senators are competing to succeed former GOP leader Mitch McConnell when he steps down early next year and Republicans take back the majority in the Senate.
Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida campaigned furiously to win the support of their colleagues in Wednesday’s secret ballot elections. All three try to convince their colleagues that they have the ear of newly elected President Donald Trump and will be the best person to carry out his agenda.
They are also trying to differentiate themselves from McConnell by saying they will give rank-and-file senators more power and be more communicative.
It is not clear who will win, or whether there will be multiple rounds of voting before a winner is chosen.
A look at the three candidates:
Thune, 63, defeated then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004 after arguing during the campaign that Daschle had lost his South Dakota roots during his years in Democratic leadership. Now Thune wants to become majority leader himself.
Thune is a well-liked and respected communicator and is seen as a frontrunner for most of the year. He is currently the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and took over for McConnell for a few weeks last year while he was on medical leave. He is also a former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
As he prepared to become leader, Thune spent much of the year campaigning for his colleagues. He has raised more than $31 million this cycle to elect Republicans to the Senate, including a $4 million transfer from his own campaign accounts to the Senate’s main campaign arm, according to his aides.
A potential liability for Thune was his previously rocky relationship with Trump. Thune was highly critical of the then-president as he attempted to reverse his election defeat in 2020 and after the attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters on January 6, 2021. Thune then said Trump’s attempts to disrupt the peaceful transition of power were “inexcusable.”
This year, however, Thune and Trump spoke frequently on the phone and Thune visited the then-Republican candidate at his home in Florida. Thune told the Associated Press during the summer that he considers their potential relationship a professional one. If they both win their elections, Thune said, “we have a job to do.”
Like Thune, Cornyn is a popular and respected member of the Senate GOP conference. A former attorney general of Texas and member of the state Supreme Court, he has done extensive work on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was also McConnell’s No. 2, the position Thune now holds, for six years before he was temporarily fired.
Cornyn, 72, has also spent much of the year courting his colleagues, raising money for them across the country. He has long been one of the top fundraisers in the Senate, and his aides say he raised more than $400 million for party candidates during his 22 years as president.
In 2022, after a gunman stormed an elementary school in Texas and… killed 19 children and two teachersCornyn was overheard by McConnell to lead the GOP in gun legislation negotiations with Democrats. The bill, that summer passedincreased background checks for buyers under 21, increased prosecution of unlicensed gun sellers, and poured millions of dollars into mental health care for youth. While Cornyn has touted his work on gun law, it could cost him some votes among the conference’s most conservative members.
Cornyn has also had some tensions with Trump in the past, including his initial suggestions that Trump might not be the best candidate for the Republican Party in 2024. But he too has smoothed relations with the new president by meeting with him when he was in Texas was to campaign and visit him in Florida.
While Thune and Cornyn both have leadership experience and have spent most of the year methodically trying to win over individual senators, Scott is running a different kind of campaign. And he believes he has a clear advantage: his relationship with Trump.
Scott, a former two-term governor of Florida and a successful businessman, was re-elected for a second term in the Senate last week, defeating Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by more than 10 points. He has been a booster of the incoming president for years and has positioned himself as a strong ally. Scott traveled to New York to support Trump during Trump’s hush money trial earlier this year, and has openly said he wants Trump to support him.
He received a lot of support on social media last weekend when he was endorsed by people close to Trump, including Elon Musk. But Trump has not intervened in the Senate battle.
It’s unclear whether Scott’s outward approach could win him more support in the clubby Senate. He won 10 votes when he challenged McConnell for the post in 2022, and he will look to improve on that tally in the first round of voting on Wednesday.
Scott, 71, is part of a growing group of far-right senators who have criticized McConnell’s tenure and advocated for more power for individual members. Several senators in that group, including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, have endorsed him, arguing that his business experience and relationship with Trump should put him over the top.