Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is collecting signatures from his fellow Republican senators to delay the party’s leadership elections, set for Tuesday morning, arguing that after a midterm defeat this heavy, the conference should stop and take stock before it votes. “Our supporters expected us to drain the swamp, but it seems like the swamp won,” Johnson wrote.
Johnson has gathered at least five signatures on a letter to Senate Republican Conference Chairman Tom Cotton requesting a conference meeting to discuss postponing the vote — five being the number that, under conference rules, can force such a meeting. Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida and John Kennedy of Louisiana are among those who have signed or announced their support. In the letter, Johnson and his colleagues called the election result “a stunning defeat” for Republicans and called for immediate changes. His proposal: when senators meet as scheduled on Tuesday, they hold a full discussion first — a postmortem of what happened — and postpone any leadership elections until every candidate for leader has had to say what kind of collaborative governing model they would adopt.
Johnson says leadership votes were traditionally held after the new year until the timing was moved up about two decades ago, and he calls the rush to vote within days — before the final shape of the incoming Senate is even known — the wrong way to choose who leads the party for the next two years. He concedes he does not know whether the effort will succeed. Leader John Thune, who called the elections, is still expected to win another term at the head of the Republican conference; the letter is a measure of how much discontent Tuesday’s result has stirred among conservatives in his own ranks.
The leader these senators choose will decide the Republican agenda in a Senate the party no longer controls — which bills get Republican backing, which Democratic measures get fought, and how hard the party pushes the promises its voters were made, on prices, the border and the size of government. For the voters who expected the swamp drained, this delayed-or-not vote is the first sign of whether their party heard them on Tuesday.
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