Mike Lee

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) are the most senior on the committee, but Grassley is term-limited as its current chairman, and Cornyn will retire at the end of the year after his primary loss in May. Before his death, Graham was slated to take over the panel and previously led it from 2019 to 2021.

Lee praised Graham as a friend and colleague in the interview, noting that they served together on Judiciary for more than a decade and overlapped for years on the Budget Committee, where Graham was serving as chairman.

“As much as anything, he and I were just good friends,” Lee said, adding that his initial reaction to Graham’s death was shock. Graham, 71, died from a heart condition, according to a preliminary medical exam, shortly after he returned from a trip to Ukraine.

“I just still can’t believe he’s gone,” Lee said. “It just seems wrong. It seems like it couldn’t possibly be true. He’s somebody who I keep imagining might show up to his own funeral, like Tom Sawyer.”

“I will miss him badly,” Lee added. “I miss him already.”

Lee’s ascension to the chairmanship would represent a rightward shift for the committee and allow him to advance longtime priorities, including the REINS Act, which requires congressional review of major regulations.

He called any conversation of how he might run the committee “premature” and noted that “a chairmanship presupposes that Republicans still hold the majority.”

On the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Lee said his focus will be permitting reform for the remainder of this Congress, a priority that will require buy-in from Democrats on both his panel and the Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).

LINDSEY GRAHAM’S SISTER TO BE SWORN IN TO THE SENATE ON TUESDAY

“I’ve been working on this for a year, the last year and a half. This needs to happen,” Lee said. “I can’t think of anything going through this committee that is more important.”