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Junior senators eye leadership roles
Freshman Sen. Ron Johnson voted against the deal to keep the government operating through mid-November, the compromise to avert a debt default in August and the last-minute accord to avert a shutdown in April.
Now he wants a seat at the leadership table where those deals were cut.
"My intention doing this wouldn't be to change," Johnson (R-Wis.) told POLITICO. "I'm a pretty conservative guy, so I would want to influence our leadership team toward the core conservative positions."
Johnson's bid for the No. 5 spot as vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference will mark the first time a tea-party-backed freshman has a chance of joining the elite leadership team. It's also a test of the movement's clout as he gears up for a possible race against Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, a longtime figure in the Washington GOP establishment who is touting his ties to House Republicans.
Johnson's emergence from back-benched freshman to potentially one of the most powerful Republican leaders would mark the conference's latest move to the right, and another sign of the ongoing generational shift in the Senate as it adjusts to the growing clout of more ideologically driven junior lawmakers less accustomed to cutting a deal.
"I think all you need to do is look ... at how many [GOP senators] have come in the last seven years - I mean, it's a huge chunk of the caucus," said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who was first elected to the chamber in 2004 and who is running for the GOP's No. 2 spot next Congress. "You're beginning to see that as a presence in leadership."
Indeed, 26 senators out of the 47-member Senate GOP conference have been elected since the 2004 elections, including 15 who have joined the ranks since last year, when the tea party helped redefine conservative politics.
But that tells only part of the story.
The Republican leadership team - run by 26-year veteran Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - will be filled by a spate of far more junior lawmakers beginning in January and continuing after next November's elections.
In January, GOP senators will hold a closed-door meeting to vote on a replacement for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who abruptly announced last month that he would quit his post as the conference's No. 3 official because he felt constrained from striking bipartisan compromises while serving in the leadership.
That departure would pave the way for Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and John Barrasso of Wyoming to move up to the No. 3 and No. 4 spots, allowing the two staunch conservatives who joined the chamber in 2005 and 2007, respectively, to play an even greater role in their conference.
And that would open up the No. 5 position of conference vice chairman, for which Johnson has secured 11 public commitments from his colleagues. Blunt said he's getting "a lot of encouragement" as he mulls over whether to run for the spot.
While Blunt also was elected to the Senate last year, he served in the House for 14 years and rose in the ranks of Republican leadership, including a brief stint as majority leader.
Asked how he differed from Johnson, Blunt pointed to his "understanding of how you actually work with the House to get things done, how we need to have stronger relationships with the House strategically and tactically."
Whoever wins that spot in January will have a chance to ascend even higher up the GOP ladder in the next Congress after Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl retires and gives up his spot as the powerful Republican whip, the No. 2 position. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and one of the most conservative members since joining the chamber in December 2002, is considered by insiders to be a front-runner to take the position if he faces a head-to-head matchup against Burr.
But everything is up in the air until the conference holds a secret ballot election.
The shuffle underscores how a body once dominated by old bull senior senators prone to cut deals - like Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy and Alaska Republican Ted Stevens - is now being far more influenced by younger members eager to show voters the immediate impact they're making.
Even if Johnson wins his leadership bid, he may learn what others before him have: to put aside personal beliefs for the good of the party's political interests.
"I do feel that right now, if you are an elected leader, there is more of an assumption that you ought to go along with the leadership than maybe they expect of the average senator," said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who joined the Senate in 1981. "I feel that in the last four to five years, it's been very much that way. I suppose because unity of leadership is more apt to bring unity of the caucus."
As McConnell has tried to block much of President Barack Obama's agenda, there are signs he's adjusted his positions and tactics because of the younger membership within his ranks. After Republicans won the 2010 elections by railing against government spending, McConnell pledged to give up earmarks even though he had long defended them.
And as Congress established the powerful deficit-cutting supercommittee, McConnell named two freshmen, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, for two of his three selections to serve on a panel tasked with finding more than $1 trillion in budget savings.
The growing clout among junior members in the GOP conference may be even more evident in the next Congress. Twenty-three of the 33 Senate seats in-cycle next year belong to Democrats, and several of those could change hands, potentially putting even more freshmen in the ranks and catapulting McConnell to Senate majority leader.
If the GOP is in the majority in 2013 with the power to set the Senate agenda, the new leadership team would need to decide when to compromise with Democrats and when to push purely partisan approaches.
"People are going to look for results," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). "If we get it all back, we'll have a moment in time to produce change that really needs to occur. It has to be bipartisan."
Graham said he's confident the next leadership team will seek bipartisan consensus, but if not: "Then we'll lose again."
Johnson, 56, was chief executive of a plastics manufacturing company in Oshkosh, Wis., before his stunning defeat of Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold in last November's elections.
"He does see things differently than some of our leadership members have seen them," said Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a fellow freshman conservative who is backing Johnson's bid.
In June, Johnson caught his colleagues on both sides of the aisle by surprise when he abruptly went down to the Senate floor and vowed to stall virtually all business unless it would stop Washington from "bankrupting America."
After his leadership spoke with him about his guerrilla tactics that could have brought the Senate to a standstill, Johnson backed down from his threat.
In the interview, Johnson insisted that he's open to working with Democrats and "that if you want to accomplish things in this country, ... you have to work with the other side."
But even on the select occasions McConnell has been forced to work with the other side to keep the government running and raise the national debt ceiling, Johnson objected.
"I didn't come here to sit there and agree to very unserious proposals in terms of addressing the [fiscal] situation," Johnson said.
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