Senate Republicans nominated Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota to succeed Mitch McConnell as majority leader, setting him up to be the main force to push through President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.
Thune beat out Florida Senator Rick Scott - a favorite of allies of Trump’s such as Elon Musk - and Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who previously held the job of whip.
First elected in 2004, Thune beat former majority leader Tom Daschle to represent South Dakota in the chamber.
Scott, for his part, had staged a very public campaign, pressing on social media with Musk and other figures such as Trump ally Robert F Kennedy Jr. A longtime ally of Trump, Scott had said he would work to rapidly confirm Trump’s nominees and allow Trump to make appointments during recess, which hasn’t been done in more than a decade.
On Wednesday, Trump paid a visit to House Republicans before he visited President Joe Biden at the White House. The slate of new leadership will still face significant challenges given that Republicans will likely have slim margins in the House of Representatives should they hold their marjority.
Thune’s nomination reveals the limits the MAGA wing of the Republican Party has on the upper chamber, which is often viewed as more sober-minded than the more rambunctious House of Representatives.
In 2021, while 139 members of the House of Representatives voted to object to the 2020 election results, only eight senators did, with Scott being one of them.
Earlier in the year, McConnell, who has been Republican leader since 2007, announced he would leave the position at the end of the year. Both Cornyn and Thune were proteges of McConnell while Scott frequently clashed with the minority leader and indeed tried to challenge him as leader after the 2022 midterms.
Thune will now have enormous power as majority leader, which will include confirming Trump’s cabinet and judicial nominations. Republicans flipped the Senate last week alongside Trump winning the White House.
Thune voted to confirm most of Trump’s cabinet appointments and his judicial nominations during the first administration. He also voted for efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the massive tax cuts that Trump signed in 2017.
Those tax cuts expire at the end of next year, giving Thune his first major policy challenge.
Trump and Thune have previously clashed and, at one point, the president-elect wanted South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to challenge Thune for his seat. But the two have largely put their differences aside and Thune endorsed Trump earlier this year.
On Tuesday, Trump announced that he would nominate Noem to be his secretary of Homeland Security, while also announcing John Ratcliffe as his nominee to lead the CIA, Mike Huckabee as his nominee to be ambassador to Israel and Fox News pundit Pete Hegseth to be his the nominee for secretary of defense.
