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CV NEWS FEED // Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, announced Wednesday that he will step down as Senate Republican leader at the end of 2024, concluding a 17-year run in the post.
Republicans are set to elect McConnell’s successor in November. The new Republican Conference leader will take office in January 2025, when the 119th Congress is seated.
McConnell made the announcement in a speech on the Senate floor.
“As some of you may know, this has been a particularly difficult time for my family,” he began. He noted that his sister-in-law Angela had passed away a few weeks earlier. “When you lose a loved one, particularly at a young age, there is a certain introspection that accompanies the grieving process.”
“Perhaps it is God’s way of reminding you of your own life’s journey to reprioritize the impact on the world that we will all inevitably leave behind,” he said. “I turned 82 last week. The end of my contributions are closer than I’d prefer.”
He quoted Ecclesiastes 3:1: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven.”
“I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate,” McConnell said.
“As I said on the Senate floor, one of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on,” McConnell wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday afternoon. “It’s been the honor of my life to serve as Republican leader.”
McConnell has served as Senate Minority Leader since 2021, and previously held the position from 2007 to 2015. When Republicans controlled the Senate from 2015 to 2021, he served as Senate Majority Leader.
The Kentucky Republican is the longest-serving party leader in the history of the Senate. He led Senate Republicans during the tenures of four different presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
In addition, McConnell has held his Senate seat since 1985. He has indicated that he plans to serve out his entire term set to end in January 2027 – but will not run for reelection.
“I will finish the job the people of Kentucky hired me to do as well – albeit from a different seat in the chamber,” the outgoing leader said during his floor speech. “I am looking forward to that.”
According to the Associated Press (AP), President Biden “said he was sorry to hear the news” of McConnell stepping down.
“I’ve trusted [McConnell] and we have a great relationship,” Biden remarked. “We fight like hell. But [McConnell] has never, never, never misrepresented anything.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, had kind words for his fellow Republican leader.
“Mitch McConnell rose from humble beginnings overcoming polio to become one of the most consequential Senate Leaders in history,” Johnson wrote on X.
“He started his Senate career as a legislative aide and ended up in charge of the upper chamber,” Johnson continued:
No Member of Congress has played a greater role in reshaping the federal judiciary than Mitch. I join my colleagues in saluting his historic contributions to the Republican Party and to the Congress. His legacy will endure for generations.
Americans For Tax Reform President Grover Norquist wrote that through his legislative achievements, McConnell “changed the direction of the world” and leaves an “amazing and lasting legacy.”
“He stopped the destruction of the Republican Party by opposing, delaying and weakening and ultimately defeating the drive for ‘campaign finance reform’ that would have left union bosses as the sole power in America,” Norquist wrote. “Senator McConnell heroically sculpted the present Supreme Court and saved the second amendment, religious liberty and free speech.”
NBC News reported that “McConnell’s most consequential legacy dates back to his extraordinary decision in 2016 to refuse to let then-President Barack Obama fill a vacant Supreme Court seat” by not holding a confirmation vote on his nominee, now-Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The vacancy was the result of the unexpected death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who was often described as the de facto leader of the Court’s conservative wing.
Then-Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s risk ended up paying off for American conservatives, as he and his fellow Senate Republicans were able to keep the seat open for the remainder of Obama’s presidency.
In a major upset, Trump defeated favored Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential Election. Trump then appointed now-Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch – a fellow conservative – to replace the late Scalia.
The outgoing Republican Senate leader also presided over the unprecedentedly difficult Senate confirmation processes of Trump’s other two Supreme Court nominees: now-Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Both were confirmed by narrow margins.
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were all part of the six-justice majority who overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022.
Pointing to that fact, Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-ND, noted: “There are some pretty major victories that” Trump and McConnell “together accomplished, and neither one of them could have, probably, without the other.”
However, despite his unquestionable role in helping secure the Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe, McConnell has been criticized by many in the pro-life movement for his 1994 vote for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
In recent years, the Biden administration has used the FACE Act to prosecute pro-life activists such as Mark Houck (unsuccessfully) and Lauren Handy (successfully).
CatholicVote Director of Governmental Affairs Tom McClusky weighed in on McConnell’s little-known FACE Act vote.
“Mitch McConnell has seen many things in his decades in Congress,” said McClusky:
While he is known for confirming judges and defending free speech he is also the only Republican left in Congress who voted for the FACE Act, which targets peaceful pro-life protesters, and he supported the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which targets pro-life organizations.
“Many will debate what his legacy should be,” McClusky added. “Hopefully that legacy includes a debate on age limits for Members of Congress.”
With McConnell’s departure imminent, the race is on to elect the first new Republican Senate leader in over a decade-and-a-half.
Again from NBC News:
The race for a successor is expected to begin immediately with the “three Johns” — Senate Minority Whip John Thune, of South Dakota, the No. 3 Republican Sen. John Barrasso, of Wyoming, and former GOP Whip Sen. John Cornyn, of Texas — widely expected to run for the position.
Sen. J.D. Vance, R-OH, made a light-hearted joke about the scenario. “I plan to support John,” the freshman senator said.
Most sources regard Thune, who is the second-highest-ranking Senate Republican after McConnell, as the frontrunner to win the job.
