By: Kate Ackley

February 28, 2024 

• K St. brokers say Thune likely, wary of Trump tapping outsider
• Change at the top comes as GOP shifts away from business

Business lobbyists see potential new risks for corporate interests on Capitol Hill when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell leaves his leadership spot in November.

Even if the Kentucky Republican’s successor hails from a small pool of expected candidates, the shift will inject uncertainty into the Senate’s agenda and comes amid a changing Republican Party, one that doesn’t always have business interests in mind.

McConnell’s announcement Wednesday that he would be stepping down from leadership did not surprise GOP lobbyists but hit home that they will have to grapple with the loss of key ally of the business community by year’s end.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) are considered likely potential successors with many lobbyists giving Thune, himself a former lobbyist, an edge. But they’re also bracing for other entrants and unknowns. Former President Donald Trump, for example, could try to sway Senate Republicans toward, or against, a particular contender.

“We don’t know what the next generation of Senate leadership will look like,” said GOP lobbyist Stewart Verdery, who runs Monument Advocacy, and worked in the Senate. Even if Cornyn and Thune appear early front-runners, along with Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), “it may very well be President Trump has a different type of leader in mind.”

“That brings in a lot of wild cards,” especially for business interests, Verdery said.

McConnell was a lawmaker that the business community viewed as a pragmatist and deal-maker.

“Almost every big business-related bill has had his fingerprints all over it,” Verdery said, including debt-limit deals and tax cuts.

Republican lobbyist Alex Vogel, who runs the Vogel Group, said he got to know McConnell decades ago as a young lawyer working on campaign finance issues, a signature issue for McConnell, who has long fought regulations on First Amendment grounds.

“I cannot think of a singularly more impactful leader, in either party,” Vogel said. McConnell is “not replaceable,” he said. “A remarkable change will come to the institution.”

“Whoever the next leader is, would be wise to spend as much time studying how Leader McConnell led that disparate group,” Vogel said.

Democrats on K Street said McConnell was a formidable opponent.

“As a Democrat, I have always considered McConnell the evil genius behind a lot of policies I didn’t typically agree with, but I do appreciate the honor and decorum he has kept in the institution that is simply absent in the House,” said lobbyist Cristina Antelo, founder of Ferox Strategies.

The race to succeed him, she added, “will be interesting to watch as the fortunes of several on K Street hang in the balance.”

Caveats and Uncertainty

Many lobbyists said they see Thune as best positioned, but caveats and uncertainty hover.

“Thune and his senior staff have built a solid operation that is turn key and ready to handle with whatever comes next session,” said Republican lobbyist Ozzie Palomo, a founder of Chartwell Strategy Group.

Still, he said, “I expect some wildcard names to be thrown in the mix over the next few months and a lot will depend where the conference falls on several policy and political issues over the next several months.”

Brian McGuire, a former chief of staff to McConnell and now a policy director at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, said his former boss had had “an incredible run” leading his party in the Senate over the past two decades during “this era of political turbulence.”

McConnell’s work in the Senate, McGuire said, “is not finished.”

Influence Ties

Like McConnell, other contenders for the job have former aides scattered around the lobbying, communications, and policy influence sector.

Matt Leggett, a partner at K&L Gates who previously worked for Barrasso, said that McConnell’s plan to remain as leader until November “provides some stability and certainty for clients that in terms of any business that needs to be completed by end of this year, he and his team will still be at the helm.”

Longer-term, Leggett said, “creates a big question mark,” including what the next leader’s priorities will be.

Brian Walsh, a partner at PLUS Communications, said his former boss Cornyn as well as Thune are both “well liked and well respected.” GOP senators picking their next leader will “come down to a personal decision for many of the individual senators,” Walsh said. He noted Cornyn’s work at the Senate party committee for two cycles.

“I don’t think from a business community perspective that people would see a lot of daylight between them on a lot of key issues,” said Walsh.