Ron Johnson

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) will lead Republicans in the minority next year, securing another term after conservatives attempted to delay their internal conference vote.

Thune and the rest of his leadership team were elected by acclamation in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that grew contentious over the outcome of the midterm elections and whether more time should be given to process the results.

Thune did not face a leadership challenge and is generally well-liked by his conference, but some senators were upset over how quickly the internal election was being held, with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) leading around half a dozen of his colleagues in a push to delay the vote.

The vote took place after the conference held a lengthy discussion about the midterm elections, a meeting Johnson successfully convened with the help of Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Rick Scott (R-FL), and two other colleagues.

The conversation was an “open mic session where people could talk about whatever,” according to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who supported a delay in the vote, and stretched into the afternoon due to a break given so members of the Senate Judiciary Committee could attend a hearing.

The forum, which eventually migrated to the Old Senate Chamber, included discussion by multiple Senate Republicans who lost their races last week and was led by Johnson, who called it a “very good, respectful conversation.” Other senators described the tenor of the meeting as civil and “frank” and said GOP priorities for the lame duck also came up.

“Everybody’s having their say,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who told reporters that his preference was to get past the leadership election and continue to have a “family discussion” about what went wrong last Tuesday.

Republicans will lose at least seven seats in the midterm elections, with two races still uncalled, an outcome that Republicans widely blame on the war in Iran and its impact on gas and diesel prices. Cramer said President Donald Trump was brought up repeatedly, “particularly for people who hadn’t won.”

Hawley, a populist who may run for president in 2028, tied the loss directly to the priorities of congressional leadership and said Senate Republicans should have focused more on bringing down the cost of gas and healthcare.

“This Congress needs to think,” he said. “I mean, it’s easy to blame other people, but we need to look at what has happened here.”

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), one of the incumbents who lost, said that he “didn’t blame anyone” in the meeting.

“I’m a forward-looking guy,” Husted said.

“I thanked everybody for all their help and just shared the fact that I think it’s important that, in the world that we live in, that we listen to the needs of nurses and truck drivers and construction workers and machinists and get out of our algorithm and get into reality,” he added.

Johnson ultimately walked out of the meeting, as previewed by the Washington Examiner, rather than participate in the leadership election. His earlier bid to delay the vote failed 31 to 15, clearing the way for Thune and other members of leadership to be approved by the conference.

Thune, first elected as GOP leader in 2024, ran unopposed on Tuesday, as did his deputies.

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Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) was reelected as GOP whip, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) as GOP conference chairman, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) as policy committee chairwoman, and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) as conference vice chairman.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) also joined the leadership ranks and will chair the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Emerging from the conference meeting, Thune told reporters that he posed a simple question to Senate Republicans: “What would you have me do differently?”

“I mean, I think everything we did, given the constraints we had to deal with, all the stuff that was coming at us on a daily basis, narrow margin in the House, the White House, the Democrats over here who were obstructing in two long government shutdowns, I think we came out of it as well as could have been expected, and got a lot of stuff done,” Thune said.

He attributed the extent of their losses to the war in Iran and said that he had no reason to be apologetic, arguing that legislative achievements such as last year’s GOP tax law got drowned out by the political noise.

“If you believe the exit polls, it was the war, it was the economy, it was inflation, it was fuel prices, and I think that’s kind of what the election was about,” Thune said. “And I think on the political side, I don’t know what more I could have done. The amount of money we raised was record, but it’s a good example that money sometimes doesn’t matter if you don’t have the winning message.”

Thune did, however, commit to making full use of the lame duck session to confirm judges and advance other GOP priorities. A resolution was approved at the end of their conference meeting committing that Senate Republicans would do “everything humanly possible” to pass one more party-line budget bill before the end of the year, according to a source familiar with the matter.