CLYDE, Ohio — Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he has few regrets about his party’s record and is already waving off fellow Republicans stirring up a blame game about the midterm elections.
Senate Republicans could be days away from losing their majority, with the party needing to suddenly shift big money to red states they believed should have been safe seats.
But on the trail in what has traditionally been a solidly red state, the Republican leader isn’t ready for any Monday morning quarterbacking about what his party could have done differently.
“It’s a broader map,” Thune says from the kitchen table of a northern Ohio home. “We’ve done all we can do, and with the things that we can control.”
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When pressed on what’s keeping him up at night, Thune points to the Republican firewall states of Maine, Ohio, Iowa and Alaska. Beyond that, he namechecks Texas, Kansas and Nebraska before acknowledging what he calls “the tough political environment.”
“The president’s not on the ballot, so there’s some headwinds that our candidates are dealing with, but they’re really high-quality candidates.”
GOP candidates have found themselves on the back foot after months of being battered by the Iran war, and gas and food prices that have remained stubbornly high ever since the conflict began. They’re also dragged down by President Donald Trump’s record-low approval ratings that aren’t doing his members much good.
Thune immediately pointed to Sen. Jon Husted, the Republican who is running against former Sen. Sherrod Brown for his first full term and whom Thune is on the road to boost. He’s been joined by other prominent Republicans including Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz.
Husted, however, is having trouble getting over the hump. Polls show that he and Brown are in a nip-and-tuck race. One unclear factor is whether Vivek Ramaswamy, the party’s candidate for Ohio governor, will drag him down. Ramaswamy’s campaign started cratering after his decision to air a controversial ad featuring the estranged mother of Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent who was allegedly sexually abused by her stepfather when she was 12 years old.
Multiple Republicans, including Husted, have argued that the ad was a mistake or that it should be pulled down. Thune indicated that Husted is in the right here.
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“I think … there’s been enough spent defining candidates in both the governor’s race and the Senate races here that I think people are going to be able to differentiate,” Thune said. “I feel really good about our chances here.”
Ohio was among the final stops on the trail for the leader, who campaigned in nearly a dozen places in recent weeks, including in Iowa late last week for Rep. Ashley Hinson, the Senate nominee in another battleground race.
The South Dakota Republican’s lack of second-guessing also applies to the Senate GOP’s response to the unpopular Iran war, which has sent fuel prices soaring. In Ohio, gas prices average $4.26 per gallon, with diesel costs nearing $6.50 per gallon on average.
Thune has sung a consistent tune since the war kicked off in February: that the war should wrap up sooner rather than later, that the Strait of Hormuz should be open and that once the war concludes, prices will normalize. It’s taken longer than he imagined, but he defends his party sticking behind the Trump administration’s strategy.
“I don’t think we were in a position, frankly, that we could have done anything differently. As I look back on the last year … in the category of things that we can control, I think we did everything we possibly could,” Thune said. “When you’re in a situation like that, where you’ve got troops deployed in harm’s way, everybody kind of surrounds the flag and makes sure that we stick together for the country. Now, I’m hopeful that the president and his team will bring this to a fairly quick end. I feel like we’re getting there.”
Whether that happens remains to be seen. The White House has indicated to allies in the Middle East that a “short, intense military campaign” against Iran is expected once the midterms conclude, according to The Wall Street Journal.
As for his own political future, Thune is expected to run for a second term leading the Republican conference, despite some discontent among members on his right flank.
There are a number of questions in the leadership race, including whether Trump will get involved one way or another. Thune recently told CBS News that he isn’t banking on Trump’s support.
Helping Thune out is that there is no obvious challenger at this point.
“[Thune] doesn’t hire senators. He doesn’t fire senators. He doesn’t set our pay. He can’t reprimand us. Other than that, he’s the leader,” Ohio’s other Republican senator, Bernie Moreno, told The Sun with a laugh during an interview. “It’s a thankless job. He does a great job.”
“He’s an incredible human being. Probably too nice sometimes,” Moreno said. “But look, he’s going to be the leader of the conference one way or the other. Nobody’s running against him, and I think that’s the way it should be.”
But Thune has found himself on the wrong side of some of Trump’s MAGA allies and his own colleagues who demanded he pass the SAVE America Act, the hardline voting bill that has no avenue of passage in the upper chamber.
Some of those backers are already laying the groundwork to blame the Senate Republican leader if the midterms go south for the party. Unsurprisingly, Thune is used to the constant criticism.
“They blame me for everything,” he said. “You got people out there … they’re going to complain when their ice cream’s cold. There’s just a lot of people who are never gonna be happy.”
On top of an already-brewing blame game, Thune is also preparing for what could be an onerous lame duck session, especially if Republicans lose the chamber. Leading the to-do list is funding the government, a defense authorization bill and farmer’s assistance legislation. He is also eyeing a permitting reform bill that is set to be the first item to hit the floor during the two-month work session, pending Democratic cooperation.
The big “if” remains whether a third budget reconciliation package is on the agenda, especially if this marks the final weeks of the Republican trifecta. Moreno recently told reporters that losing control in Congress would prompt a “last supper” vehicle for the party to cram in priorities of all stripes, but it’s unclear what could pass.
“Right now, we don’t have the votes to get on a third recon bill [and a] budget resolution. … We might have them after [the midterms],” Thune said. “We don’t have it now, and we don’t know that we have the votes to defend against the poison pill Democrat amendments.”
He said there are unknown factors: “The question is, how does the election outcome change that? I think the election outcome obviously is probably going to shape in a very significant way what’s achievable in the lame duck.” He also admitted, “it’s going to be the art of the doable.”
While talk in the immediate term focuses on his future as leader, questions have also risen about how long Thune plans to stick around the Capitol.
He took a full year to decide whether to run for a fourth term in 2022. But he has already indicated that he will seek a fifth term in 2028, with an official announcement likely to come sooner rather than later.
“We’ll start putting the wheels in motion fairly quickly on that,” he said about a timeline for a decision. Referring to his critics on the right, he said, “obviously, there’s all this speculation that they’ll come after me and want to primary me. They did that last time.”
“I’m fully confident that we can survive both primary and general elections, but it’s got to be the right thing to do,” Thune continued. “That’s always a conversation my wife and I have — kind of about where we are in life, and where we think we can make the biggest difference, and I feel like the job I have right now is a bit of a calling.”
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