GOP conservatives want Trump to play role in picking McConnell successor

Some Republican senators want former President Trump to play an influential role in electing the next Senate Republican leader, hoping for a dramatic change in leadership style after Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) record-setting 18-year run.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) appears to be the front-runner to succeed McConnell, although Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former whip and a prodigious fundraiser, might edge him out.

But senators say that if Trump wins the Nov. 5 election, he could dramatically shake up the race by throwing his political weight behind another candidate, such as Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), or perhaps National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (Mont.).

“Anyone who thinks Trump isn’t going to have an outsized influence on the leader race is dumb, willfully naive, or both,” a Republican senator who requested anonymity told The Hill.  

Trump endorsed Scott when he ran against McConnell after the 2022 midterm election with limited impact. McConnell won the race by a vote of 37-10. But senators viewed Trump’s return to the White House as a remote possibility at the time.

He would have more influence in the leadership race this time around if he defeats Vice President Harris.

“It’s important no matter who’s president … to have a good working relationship with the president. That’s just completely obvious. I think it’s extremely important,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who argues that Trump’s endorsement would be a major factor in next month’s race.

“He’s going to be the president of the United States. If we’re in the majority, he’s basically driving the bus. We’re the deck hands. We’re going to have to implement the things he’s directing us in terms of what he wants to accomplish,” added Johnson, who backs Scott.

“You need a really strong working relationship in that situation,” he said. “I’ve been looking for a more collaborative conference for quite some time.”

Both Thune and Cornyn have emphasized to Republican colleagues they would strive to collaborate closely with Trump.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), another Trump ally, said Thune acknowledged during a private meeting with him in March “that there can’t be a rocky relationship” with Trump “or he won’t be leader.”

Daines is focused on winning Senate races and hasn’t said whether he will run for leader.

McConnell, who served as GOP leader throughout Trump’s term in office, helped pass Trump’s biggest legislative achievement, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

He played an even bigger role in helping Trump reshape the Supreme Court by blocking President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland from the court in 2016 and then confirming three conservative justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

But he fell short in trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, another top Trump priority. And Trump blamed McConnell for not passing an infrastructure bill while he was president.

“He continuously said he couldn’t get it passed,” Trump complained in November 2021 after McConnell and 18 other Senate Republicans voted for a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that President Biden signed into law that year.

The two also did not have a great relationship, as McConnell revealed in an oral history recorded at the end of 2020.

McConnell privately thought Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” according to a new biography of the GOP leader by Michael Tackett, the deputy Washington bureau chief of The Associated Press.

GOP senators say the next Republican leader needs to have a much better relationship with Trump and predict that will guide how they and their colleagues vote in the leadership race.

“If Republicans win the majority in the Senate and if Trump wins the White House, I think it’s going to be very important for whoever our next Republican leader is to work closely with President Trump and his team,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told The Hill.

Lee said if Trump intervenes in the leadership race, “it would be very significant.”

Senators who have long bridled under McConnell’s leadership style, characterized by tight control over Senate floor strategy and close affiliation with the Senate GOP’s biggest super PAC — the Senate Leadership Fund — have doubts about whether Thune or Cornyn would bring much change to how business is done.

These conservatives want to exert more influence over the next leader and view Trump as their best chance to shake up the status quo.

Lee has proposed a list of reforms that Republican senators will discuss on Nov. 13 when they assemble to elect their new leadership team.

He and other Senate conservatives want to prohibit the next Senate GOP leader from using a procedural tactic known as “filling the amendment tree” to block them from getting votes on amendments to must-pass bills. Under Lee’s proposal, the GOP leader could only block amendment votes with the support of three-fourths of the Republican conference.

They also want to implement a conference rule that the GOP floor leader should only whip for or against a bill or a nominee with the support of the majority of the conference.

This is designed to prevent the next Republican leader from pushing legislation through the Senate that most Republican senators oppose, something McConnell did with the $1 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021 and gun-violence legislation and the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022.

Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso (Wyo.), who confirmed that Republican senators will debate these proposed reforms before they vote for their next leader on Nov. 13, said Trump is counting on a Republican Senate to get things done if he’s elected president.

“He knows that we all need to work together so we can immediately get his Cabinet in place and stop what Democrats want to do in terms of tax increases,” said Barrasso, who appeared with Trump at the Jets-Steelers football game in Pittsburgh Sunday night.