Senate Republicans settle on a new party leader after seizing the majority on Election Day

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was the first seriously contested Senate Republican leadership election in decades.

Three senators were competing to succeed longtime GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, when he steps down from the post at the beginning of next year and Republicans take back the Senate majority.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota was elected Wednesday by fellow Republicans in a secret ballot vote.

Thune, along with Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida, had campaigned furiously for the job. They also tried to differentiate themselves from McConnell, saying they would give rank-and-file senators more power and be more communicative.

Each tried to make the case that he would be the best person to implement President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.

A look at those three senators:

THUNE

Thune, 63, defeated then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004 after arguing during the campaign that Daschle had lost his South Dakota roots during his years in Democratic leadership.

Well liked and a respected communicator, Thune had been seen as a front-runner for much of the year. He was the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and took over for McConnell for a few weeks last year when McConnell was on a medical leave. Thune is a former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.

As he geared up to run for leader, Thune spent much of the year campaigning for his colleagues. According to his aides, he raised more than $31 million to elect Senate Republicans this cycle, including a $4 million transfer from his own campaign accounts to the Senate’s main campaign arm.

One potential liability for Thune had been his previously rocky relationship with Trump. Thune was highly critical of the then-president as Trump tried to overturn his election defeat in 2020 and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters. Thune said at that time that Trump’s efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power were “inexcusable.”

This year, though, Thune and Trump talked frequently on the phone and Thune visited the then-GOP candidate at his home in Florida. Thune told The Associated Press over the summer that he viewed their potential relationship as a professional one.

CORNYN

Cornyn is a popular and respected member of the Senate GOP conference. A former Texas attorney general and member of the state Supreme Court, much of his work has been on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was also McConnell’s No. 2, the job Thune now holds, for six years before he was term-limited out of the job.

Cornyn, 72, had also spent much of the year courting his colleagues and fundraising for them around the country. He has long been one of the best fundraisers in the Senate, and his aides say he has raised more than $400 million for party candidates during his 22 years in office.

In 2022, after a gunman stormed a Texas elementary school and killed 19 children and two teachers, Cornyn was tapped by McConnell to lead the GOP in negotiating gun legislation with Democrats. The bill, passed that summer, stepped up background checks for buyers under 21, increased prosecutions for unlicensed gun sellers and put millions of dollars into youth mental health services. While Cornyn has promoted his work on the gun bill, it could cost him some votes with the conference’s most conservative members.

Cornyn also had some past tensions with Trump, including his early suggestions that Trump might not be the best GOP candidate to run in 2024. But the senator, too, has smoothed relations with the incoming president, meeting him when he was in Texas to campaign and visiting him in Florida.

SCOTT

While Thune and Cornyn both have leadership experience and have spent the better part of the year methodically trying to woo individual senators, Scott ran a different kind of campaign. And he believed he had a distinct advantage: his relationship with Trump.

Scott, a former two-term governor of Florida and a successful businessman, was reelected to a second term in the Senate last week, beating Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by more than 10 percentage points. He is a longtime booster of the incoming president, and positioned himself as a strong ally. Scott traveled to New York to support Trump during Trump’s hush money trial earlier this year, and had said he wanted Trump to endorse him.

Scott won a rush of support on social media over the weekend when he was endorsed by people close to Trump, including Elon Musk.

Scott won 10 votes when he challenged McConnell for the post in 2022.

Scott, 71, is part of a growing group of far-right senators who have criticized McConnell’s tenure and advocated for more power for individual members. Several senators in that group, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, endorsed him, citing his business experience and relationship with Trump.