Senate GOP rebels move to delay leadership vote, demand reckoning after midterm disaster

Last week’s pummeling on Election Night has a cohort of Senate Republicans wanting to take stock as lawmakers return to Washington, D.C.

The Senate GOP is slated to hold its leadership elections Tuesday morning, where Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is expected to seek another term as top Republican.

But a small group led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., wants to delay the leadership elections to debrief after last week’s stunning losses and chart a path forward heading into the minority. Senate Democrats flipped the chamber by clinching 54 seats, and that number could grow depending on the outcomes in Mississippi and Alaska.

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Johnson, in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital to Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., the conference chair for the Senate GOP, argued the election should be delayed “until we all have a chance to hear from leadership candidates as to what type of collaborative conference governing model we should adopt and what our strategy will be to counter the emboldened Democrats.”

“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat, and there are multiple reasons for it,” Johnson wrote. “We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to what we can do to improve the outcome in 2028.”

“Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice,” he continued. “It is certainly not the way leadership elections should be conducted in the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

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The Senate GOP’s rules do allow for the consideration of such a delay, as long as Johnson can get five signatures on his letter, and he did, securing Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., John Kennedy, R-La., Ted Budd, R-N.C., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, as his base of support.

“We first need to digest what happened last week and make plans to move forward,” Lee said on X. “Turning to leadership elections Tuesday morning would put the cart before the horse.”

Others who didn’t sign onto the letter, like Sens. David McCormick, R-Pa., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., similarly want to take a beat before casting their votes for the leadership structure.

“Our conference needs to sit down and have a frank discussion about where we fell short, what we stand for, and what we’re going to do for the working families who sent us here,” Banks said in a statement.

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But Republican leadership had already planned for a meeting heading into the elections, and part of Thune’s popularity among Republicans is his willingness to take feedback from lawmakers rather than “rule with an iron fist,” a GOP aide told Fox News Digital.

Whether trying to slow down leadership elections turns into a shake-up in the Senate GOP’s power structure remains in the air, even with conservative voices outside the Senate calling for Thune to step aside.

So far, Thune is expected to run unopposed for another term and still remains popular among the conference. Possible challengers, like Scott, have already said they wouldn’t mount a bid against him.

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“I don’t want to run again. I’ve run twice,” Scott said on Fox News’ “Saturday in America.”

When pressed if he would support Thune, however, Scott said, “We’ll see what happens.”

“We’ll see who else is going to run,” he said. “I don’t know if somebody else is going to run.”