Is Mitch Mcconnell Going to Run Again
John Thune, a Likely Successor to Mitch McConnell, Weighs Retirement
Mr. Thune, the No. ii Republican in the Senate, is because giving upwards his South Dakota seat because of both family concerns and Donald Trump's enduring hold on the G.O.P.
WASHINGTON — Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican and a potential future leader, is seriously considering retiring later on next twelvemonth, a prospect that has set off an intensifying private campaign from other Republicans urging him to seek re-election.
Mr. Thune is just lx, but a combination of family concerns and former President Donald J. Trump'south enduring grip on the Republican Party take prompted the senator, who is in his tertiary term, to tell assembly and reporters in his home state that 2022 could be his last year in Congress.
His departure would be a blow to South Dakota, which has enjoyed outsize influence in Washington, and could upend Senate Republicans' line of succession. Mr. Thune has been open well-nigh his ambition to atomic number 82 his party'due south caucus after Senator Mitch McConnell makes style, and quiet but unmistakable jockeying is already underway between him and Senators John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming.
"John is the logical successor should Mitch make up one's mind to not run once again for leader," Senator Susan Collins of Maine said of Mr. Thune, while noting that Mr. McConnell'south hold on their caucus remained "very secure."
That Mr. Thune would even entertain retirement with the chance to ascend to Senate Republican leader illustrates both the strain of today's Congress and the shadow Mr. Trump casts over the party. The senator's difference would represent all the same another exit, perhaps the most revealing one yet, past a mainstream Senate Republican who has grown frustrated with the capital letter's political environs and the former president'due south loyalty demands. The exodus began in 2018 with Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Aspersion retiring rather than facing primaries, and has accelerated this year.
Part of Mr. Thune'due south hesitation owes to Mr. Trump and the potential for the former president — who lashed out at Mr. Thune early on this yr when the senator rejected his attempts to overturn the election — to intervene in South Dakota's Senate primary race. Merely the larger factor may be the longer-range prospect of taking over the Senate Republican caucus with Mr. Trump still in the wings or as the party's standard-bearer in 2024.
Mr. Thune has said he volition decide his intentions over the holidays. Notwithstanding a number of his friends and colleagues have become convinced that he is serious about leaving public life.
Among those alarmed is Mr. McConnell himself, who one adviser said had "leaned in" on pushing Mr. Thune to run again.
"I certainly promise that he will run for re-election, and that'due south certainly what I and others have been encouraging him to do all year long," Mr. McConnell said in an interview.
He is inappreciably alone.
A range of Senate Republicans — from moderates and Trump targets like Ms. Collins to Trump allies like Kevin Cramer of North Dakota — have lobbied Mr. Thune over dinner, on the Senate floor and, since lawmakers went home for Christmas recess, via text messages.
"I let him know how much I appreciate him," said Mr. Cramer, who has known Mr. Thune since they were young executive directors of their state parties. "He knows both Dakotas really need him."
Mr. Thune beginning angered Mr. Trump during the onetime president'due south final days in office, when Mr. Thune said any challenge to the ballot results "would go down like a shot canis familiaris." Mr. Trump derided the senator as "Mitch's boy" and urged Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota to run against him in the state's primary.
Since then, though, Mr. Trump has trained his burn down on Mr. McConnell, whom he has labeled "Old Crow," and largely ignored Mr. Thune.
Two meridian Senate Republican allies of Mr. Trump said he would probably refrain from targeting Mr. Thune simply because the senator, who is popular at home and has a well-stocked campaign state of war chest, is unlikely to lose a main in the state that first elected him to Congress in 1996.
"He likes winners, and John Thune is a winner," said Mr. Cramer, predicting that Mr. Trump would at nearly be "a nuisance" to Mr. Thune.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was similarly blunt about why Mr. Thune need not sweat a competitive master. "Trump worries most his win-loss record," said Mr. Graham, who is the de facto liaison between the former president and Senate Republicans.
Mr. Graham, who forth with Mr. Thune and Ms. Collins is part of a minor group of senators who ofttimes dine together in Washington, said that before they left for the holidays, he had reassured Mr. Thune almost any Trumpian intervention.
"I told John that'll be fine," Mr. Graham recalled. "John volition be fine."
Asked if he thought the threat of a Trump-inspired primary bothered Mr. Thune, Mr. McConnell said, "No. No, I don't."
Simply if Mr. Thune ascended to Republican Senate leadership, Mr. Trump could withal evidence a headache.
The sometime president does not take the influence in the Senate, where 19 Republicans defied him to support the infrastructure beak, that he does in the House. However Mr. Trump's regular attacks on Mr. McConnell and on anything that has the air of cooperation with President Biden are non lost on Senate Republicans.
A handful of them whose seats are upwardly in 2022, including Mr. Thune, opposed the infrastructure bill later on the former president'due south relentless criticism of the bipartisan measure made it difficult for Senate leaders to dorsum the legislation.
Perhaps more meaning regarding Mr. Trump's hereafter influence is the turnover in the Senate and the question of whether retiring mainstream Republicans, like Senators Richard Shelby of Alabama, Rob Portman of Ohio and Roy Blunt of Missouri, will exist replaced past Trump acolytes.
"We've just got to plow through this to the mail service-Donald Trump era, which I believe is coming," Ms. Collins said, lamenting that the quondam president's "haranguing the leader, Mitch, has gotten worse lately."
If Mr. Thune left, she said, she would "truly be beside myself."
Echoing Ms. Collins, if not as unequivocally, nigh why Mr. Thune should stay, Mr. Graham and Mr. Cramer both said he could eventually succeed Mr. McConnell, who volition exist 80 in February. Mr. Cramer said that Mr. Thune's ascension would not happen "past default" but that "it would be really expert for the farm belt."
Mr. Thune has privately expressed confidence that he will have the votes to become leader whenever in that location is a vacancy, according to Republicans who have spoken to him.
In an interview before the recess, Mr. Thune told Punchbowl News that the possibility of becoming leader was "obviously a factor in considering whether to take another run," calculation, "It'south something I'one thousand interested in."
Hoping to limit the window for any Trump interference and contest in the primary, which is scheduled for June, Mr. Thune has put off making a final decision.
Many Senate Republicans thought that was but a formality.
He has, however, go increasingly candid about the temptation of returning to his home in Sioux Falls, where he has young grandchildren.
In an impromptu interview this month that unnerved his supporters in South Dakota, Mr. Thune said running again would mean at least six more years of commuting to Washington — a lifestyle for which his wife, Kimberley, has piddling enthusiasm. "She is done with it," Mr. Thune told a local journalist.
If Mr. Thune retires, it would represent a striking historical symmetry in South Dakota. The state's two other all-time-known senators, George McGovern and Tom Daschle, both Democrats, also served three terms and left the bedchamber at a moment when they enjoyed enormous clout.
Merely both lost their re-election bids. Mr. Thune would be leaving voluntarily.
Carl Hulse contributed reporting.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/us/politics/john-thune-senate-retirement.html
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