'Political malpractice': Calls grow to delay Senate GOP leadership elections

Savannah Behrmann, CQ-Roll Call on Nov 9, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

WASHINGTON — After last week’s midterm defeats saw them lose at least seven Senate seats and the majority, calls are growing among the chamber’s Republicans to delay their Tuesday morning leadership elections.

Though no hopeful has emerged — at least publicly — to challenge current Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., for the top GOP post, the frustration is palpable as Republican senators return to D.C. and reckon with the election results.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sent a letter to Senate Conference Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on Monday morning that included the signatures of four other Republican senators asking for a delay in the leadership contest and for a conference meeting. Under conference rules, five signatures are required to call such a meeting.

The letter, also signed by Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Rick Scott of Florida, and John Kennedy of Louisiana and obtained by CQ Roll Call, reads in part: “Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat, and there are multiple reasons for it. We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to what we can do to improve the outcome in 2028.”

“Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice. It is certainly not the way leadership elections should be conducted in the world’s greatest deliberative body,” the letter continues.

The group is asking that at the time the leadership elections were set to begin, 9 a.m. on Tuesday, they “have a fulsome conference discussion and delay holding leadership elections until we all have a chance to hear from leadership candidates as to what type of collaborative conference governing model we should adopt and what our strategy will be to counter the emboldened Democrats.”

Sens. Jim Banks of Indiana and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania are similarly calling for a delay, though they do not appear on Johnson’s letter.

“A week ago, we had the worst election results in decades,” McCormick said in a post on X. “We need a discussion about what went wrong, how to fix it, what we stand for and how our agenda must focus on the concerns of the American people. As I’ve shared with Leader Thune, I don’t believe we should move to leadership elections until we have digested and debated the lessons of the midterms and how to move forward.”

“I know it’s been practice to go straight to leadership elections in recent years, but we should not rush it,” he wrote, calling Tuesday’s scheduled contest “too soon.”

Banks similarly called Tuesday “too soon,” posting on social media, “Our conference needs to sit down and have a frank conversation about where we fell short, what we stand for, and what we’re going to do for the working families who sent us here.”

“Let’s have that discussion first. Then we can choose the leaders who will carry out the agenda we agree on,” Banks wrote.

Several Senate GOP aides said that they suspect a “robust” conversation on Tuesday morning wouldn’t do much to delay the plans and that leadership elections are still expected to take place that day. They noted similar efforts from some of those same senators in previous years to sow discord in the ranks.

That includes Scott, who unsuccessfully challenged Thune in 2024 and then-GOP leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in 2022. But Scott told Fox News over the weekend, “I don’t want to run again. I’ve run twice.”

Republicans “failed. We had a horrible night,” Scott said. “Instead of having an (leadership) election, the first thing you do is you say, ‘OK, what are we going to change? We have to change something.’ So what Ron’s proposing, which I completely agree with, is let’s sit down and decide what we’re going to do differently. Then we can decide who’s going to be the leader.”

An online pressure campaign is forming in some of the same MAGA corners of the internet that have pushed to pass a sweeping voter ID bill, known as the SAVE America Act, that has stalled in the Senate. On Monday morning, influencer Scott Presler in an X post urged constituents to call their senators while praising the lawmakers who have already pushed for the leadership elections to be postponed. “Where is everyone else?” he wrote.