John Thune Rises to the Senate Top

The South Dakota Republican failed in his first try for the Senate but came back to defeat a chamber leader. Now he will be the leader himself.

John Randolph Thune entered the Senate by defeating a Senate leader in an epic race two decades ago. Now he is going to be the leader of the place himself.

Mr. Thune, 63, the telegenic senator from South Dakota, will take over as majority leader in January, heading a new Senate Republican majority of at least 52 in tandem with the incoming Trump administration — a challenging assignment for a veteran, let alone a newcomer, to lead a sometimes unruly group.

But in picking Mr. Thune, who is currently No. 2 in the party leadership, over Senator John Cornyn of Texas in a very competitive race, Senate Republicans showed that they wanted a consensus builder and a younger messenger with a new style as the 18-year-tenure of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky comes to a close.

They also repudiated Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the favorite of the MAGA faction, showing that in private at least, they prefer to stick with a seasoned establishment figure over one who pitched himself as the most loyal to President-elect Donald J. Trump.

“For a lot of people, it was the sense of comfort with John Thune being able to represent what we believe,” said fellow South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds after the lengthy closed-door, secret-ballot session. “John Thune has consistently done that, and he’s done it during a time in which President Trump was also in office before.”

Mr. Thune may be at the top of the Senate shortly, but it was not an easy path for the star high school athlete who grew up in tiny Murdo, S.D., and started his political career as a junior aide to South Dakota Senator James Abdnor. He also for a time ran the state Republican Party and the municipal league.

In 1996, he got into electoral politics by mounting a long-shot bid for his state’s open House seat and won, serving three terms.

In 2002, with the encouragement of top national Republicans, Mr. Thune decided to try to topple incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, a moderate who was popular at home in the conservative state.

It was a very tight race in the middle of a severe drought in South Dakota, a state whose economy largely depends on agriculture. Mr. Thune was not helped when President George W. Bush traveled there and, in an ill-timed bout of austerity, announced just weeks before the election that the federal government would not be providing emergency drought relief. Instead, he urged the state to persevere through hard times. Mr. Thune lost to Mr. Johnson by just over 500 votes.

The loss taught him a lot about what it takes to win a Senate election in South Dakota, and in 2004 he took on Senator Tom Daschle, the longtime Democratic leader who had originally won his seat by defeating Mr. Abdnor. It was a costly and titanic fight that focused on Mr. Daschle’s leadership of national Democrats in their opposition to the Bush administration. Mr. Thune narrowly prevailed.

The Bush era continued to present its challenges. Soon after Mr. Thune took office, the Pentagon announced plans to close Ellsworth Air Force Base, a major employer in South Dakota. Mr. Thune was forced to spearhead an intense effort to keep it open, but the fight — and the drought issue — did help Mr. Thune establish a brand of his own outside the national party.

The question for him now as he plans to take over is whether he will be willing to assert independence from Mr. Trump should the president push Republicans in a direction they may be reluctant to go.

The two have a rocky history. Mr. Thune angered Mr. Trump back in 2016 when he called for him to leave the presidential race after a video surfaced of Mr. Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women. They clashed again in 2020 when Mr. Thune said the country should “move on” from Mr. Trump’s electoral loss and that the effort to challenge the election results in Congress was destined to fail. And though he voted to acquit Mr. Trump in his impeachment trial in 2021, Mr. Thune said his vote was not “exoneration for his conduct” during the attack on the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6.

Besides serving in leadership, Mr. Thune formerly chaired the Commerce Committee and is deeply enmeshed in agricultural issues that are crucial to his state. When Mr. McConnell suffered recent health setbacks, Mr. Thune temporarily assumed more responsibility and was the favorite in the party leadership race from the start. In 2022, Mr. Thune, who has consistently coasted to re-election, considered retirement before seeking a fourth term but made a decision to remain in the Senate. On Wednesday, it paid off.

Mr. Thune did not have the far-right backing of those aligned with Mr. Scott, who was knocked out in the first round of voting, nor does he have the reputation for fund-raising and crafting political strategy that Mr. Cornyn showed in the past as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. But he is seen by his colleagues as someone who will pay heed to their ideas and build a consensus viewpoint, rather than following Mr. McConnell’s style of trying to steer the party in his chosen direction.

“Not everybody may agree with the play call, but the majority of Republicans will be on board before we make a decision and move forward,” Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, said.

Republicans expect Mr. Thune to open up the legislative process to a far greater degree than Mr. McConnell has, allowing more amendment votes on the floor in response to demands from frustrated lawmakers while following “regular order” when it comes to advancing spending legislation that has been bottled up in recent years.

“John Thune is a skilled lawmaker and compelling communicator who is fully committed to moving legislation, including appropriations bills, across the Senate floor,” said Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican in line to chair the Appropriations Committee next year.

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Aftermath of the Election

• ‘America First’ Foreign Policy: President-elect Donald Trump is considering nominees who fit more comfortably within his often erratic worldview, in which deal-making reigns over ideology.
• Demand to Skirt Senate Confirmations: Trump is pushing Republicans to systematically abdicate the Senate’s constitutional role in vetting his nominees.
• Who Will Lead the Democrats?: The party will soon have a leadership vacuum, and there will be no shortage of ambitious governors, senators and Biden cabinet members looking to fill it.

Presidential Transition

• Trump’s Cabinet Nominations: Trump has quickly begun to assemble the list of people who will serve in his cabinet and in other senior positions during his second term.
• Defense Secretary: Trump chose Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be his defense secretary, elevating a television ally to run the Pentagon.
• A Focus on Deportations: With his staffing decisions, Trump is signaling his intention to carry out a campaign promise of widespread deportations of undocumented immigrants.

More News and Analysis

• Economic Outlook: Consumer sentiment among Republicans has soared to its highest point since Trump left the White House in 2021, while declining among Democrats.
• Opposing Trump:  Two Democratic governors are forming a group to resist the next Trump administration and help protect state-level institutions of democracy.
• Congress: Ebullient Republicans returned to Capitol Hill to face questions about how they will wield their power — and how tight a grip Trump will have on their new majority.