Scott, Hawley decline to commit to backing Thune for leader

Two prominent Senate conservatives, Senate Steering Committee Chair Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), on Monday declined to commit to voting for Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) as Senate GOP leader after the party lost at least seven Senate seats in the midterm election.

Scott, who signed a letter requesting to postpone Tuesday’s Senate Republican leadership election, said GOP colleagues need to define their goals before electing a leader.

“The first step is, one, what do we want to accomplish? And then anybody, including John Thune, if they want to be [leader], the first thing they have to say is: Do they want to do that?” Scott told Fox News Digital in an interview.

“If that’s not what they want to accomplish, then why would we elect them? If that’s what they want to accomplish, then tell us why they’re the best at it,” Scott said, explaining why he supported calls to delay the leadership election.

Scott said the timing of the leadership election should be based on how long it takes for Senate Republicans to define their goals for the lame-duck session and the next Congress.

“How long does that take? I think the first step is how long is it going to take us to agree on what our path should be. If we can get that done quickly, we can have elections after that,” he said.

Scott and four other Republican senators signed a letter spearheaded by Senate Budget Committee Chair Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) calling for a delay of Tuesday’s Senate GOP leadership election so that the Republican conference can have a “robust discussion” of what went wrong in this year’s election and evaluate leadership strategies moving forward.

Johnson told the Washington Examiner on Monday that he would walk out of Tuesday’s leadership meeting in protest if Republican colleagues call for a quick vote to elect the leadership team for the next Congress.

“If you hold the election, I’ll leave the room,” Johnson declared. “I’m not going to participate in elections for leadership tomorrow.”

Hawley, a rising conservative star, also signaled some dissatisfaction with the Republican leadership team on Monday.

He declined to commit to supporting Thune before Tuesday’s meeting of the GOP conference.

“I’m not going to pledge my vote to leadership. I’ll tell you that,” Hawley told a group of reporters , including CNN’s Manu Raju.

Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) also signed the letter demanding a delay of the leadership election.

“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,” they wrote in a letter Monday to Senate GOP conference Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).