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Senate conservatives are pushing to delay internal leadership elections, which are expected to go forward as scheduled on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Thursday he is collecting signatures to send a letter to leadership calling for a conference meeting before Senate Republicans move forward with their closed-door leadership election.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to delay that. We need a robust discussion \u2013 I always call them a post-morteum \u2013 of what happened. You just can\u2019t \u2018oh, let\u2019s elect this leadership team by acclimation.\u2019 That\u2019s unacceptable,\u201d Johnson told The Clay & Buck Show.\u00a0<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n

Under Senate rules, five GOP senators can force a special conference meeting<\/u><\/a> by submitting a formal request in writing. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a frequent Johnson ally, agreed with him in a social media post and said that he would be signing Johnson\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no business holding Senate Republican leadership elections until: (1) we\u2019ve had ample opportunity to discuss what happened on Tuesday, and (2) we know who\u2019s going to be in our conference,\u201d Lee wrote.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time Johnson has used the Senate GOP\u2019s rules to force a conference-wide meeting. And Senate Republicans also defeated calls in 2022<\/u><\/a> to delay their leadership election.<\/p>\n

Republican senators and aides said Thursday they don\u2019t currently expect their leadership election to be delayed past Tuesday. Republicans could also technically slot a conference meeting into the schedule before leadership elections.<\/p>\n

Johnson acknowledged his uphill climb adding: \u201cI don\u2019t know that I\u2019ll be able to stop this vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

The push to delay the leadership election comes as Senate Majority Leader John Thune is running for a second term in the party\u2019s top spot, where he would lead the conference in the minority come January.<\/p>\n

No Republican senator has said they will oppose Thune and no one has raised their hand to challenge him, with GOP senators widely expecting him to keep the job.<\/p>\n

Johnson appeared to acknowledge that Thune would be leader. Asked if he was going to get a challenge, Johnson asked: \u201cWho would want the job?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate conservatives are pushing to delay internal leadership elections, which are expected to go forward as scheduled on Tuesday. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Thursday he is collecting signatures to send a letter to leadership calling for a conference meeting before Senate Republicans move forward with their closed-door leadership election. \u201cWe need to delay that. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}