Republicans in position to claim Senate majority

Senate Republicans are on track to claim the majority in the 119th Congress.

Gov. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., quickly flipped the Mountain State’s Senate seat Tuesday night, putting the Democrats’ current 51-49 margin in jeopardy and making it so only one more Senate pickup would put Republicans in the driver’s seat starting in January.

The next flip from Democrat-to-Republican came when The Associated Press called Ohio in favor of Bernie Moreno, defeating incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown.

There are other opportunities to expand the new majority, but regardless, both chambers of Congress are expected to be narrowly divided.

The first challenge for the GOP will be choosing a new majority leader, with current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., having already announced he will not seek another term as the leader of the conference.

It remains to be seen whether the role for the next two years will be that of an opposition leader or as someone who gets to work with Donald Trump in shaping the national agenda.

In 2016, the last time Trump was elected president, McConnell held a post-election news conference to outline the agenda and caution his colleagues in a unified GOP government against overreach.

Mike Rogers of Michigan, a former congressman in a tight Senate race, told reporters at a campaign rally last Wednesday that he hadn’t decided whom to vote to be the next Republican leader and said that none of the candidates had asked him for his support.

He praised the entire caucus for their support throughout the campaign, noting that he’d had several future colleagues asking how they could help.

“The Senate Republican caucus has been really, really good about coming out on issues that matter. They’re not here to be important, they’re here to say what can they do for ya?”

Still, he name-checked two senators who had campaigned with him last month for their work to target certain voter groups. One was South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who is likely to run to chair Senate Republicans’ campaign arm next year.

The other was Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., one of the three current candidates seeking the job as leader.

Thune, along with former Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., are the announced candidates. Scott led the National Republican Senatorial Committee last cycle.