Republicans pick Thune over Trump loyalist as Senate majority leader

Senator John Thune of South Dakota beat Trump’s loyalist Rick Scott to lead the Republican-controlled Senate.

Republicans in the United States Senate picked veteran John Thune to be the chamber’s new leader, as lawmakers, scrambling to prepare for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, rejected his camp’s favoured candidate.

Thune, who already holds a more junior leadership position, beat Texas Senator John Cornyn in a run-off vote to replace outgoing party leader Mitch McConnell. He had earlier won out against Florida’s Rick Scott, a hardline conservative and Trump loyalist.

The South Dakota senator is viewed as a well-regarded insider. His win comes on the heels of a public pressure campaign by supporters of the incoming president to pick Scott, who lost in the first round with only 13 votes.

Thune’s win in a three-way contest is a sign the Senate could retain some degree of independence from Trump next year. Scott was backed by influential outsiders like billionaire Elon Musk and conservative commentator Sean Hannity. That made the normally clubby election an early test of Senate subservience under Trump, who did not endorse a candidate.

The vote came moments after Trump met President Joe Biden for a traditional courtesy call between the incoming and outcoming occupants of the White House.

Republicans will hold at least 52 seats in the 100-seat Senate and are on track to retain their majority in the House of Representatives, where several races have yet to be called.

Not Trump’s favourite

Thune, 63, is seen as an even-tempered institutionalist and seasoned legislator who has close relationships with many of his fellow Republicans. He has been in the Senate since 2005 and will succeed 82-year-old Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.

“He was in some ways the natural choice of the establishment Republican Party,” said Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi, reporting from Capitol Hill. “You could look at this and say, ‘Well, look, that’s a bit of independence being asserted by the Senate.'”

Both Thune and Cornyn professed their fealty to Trump, Rattansi noted.

“So, in the end, you know, Trump has at least the stated loyalty of John Thune,” he said. “Still, there’s little rumblings. Even though the Republicans have the presidency, the Senate, and the House, the trifecta, it may not be as smooth sailing as perhaps the celebratory air of Donald Trump in Washington is suggesting.”

Some of Trump’s loudest supporters had expressed concern that Thune and Cornyn, who had both worked closely with McConnell, might lack the willingness to deliver on some of Trump’s campaign promises. Both have served for two decades and delivered major legislation and helped elect other Republicans.

“Without Rick Scott, the entire Trump reform agenda wobbly,” Trump adviser Robert F Kennedy Jr said in a post on X before the vote.

Senate Republicans resisted that pressure. The job of majority leader, they said, requires someone who has spent time building trust and support within the caucus.

“I don’t think it’s worth the president using the political capital that he has to weigh in on the race,” said Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Thune supporter.