McConnell to lead Senate Republicans

WASHINGTON – Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky won election by fellow Republicans on Thursday to become Senate majority leader when the new Congress convenes in January, fulfilling a long-held ambition.

A Senate Republican official said McConnell, 72, was chosen by acclamation at a closed-door meeting of the rank and file.

As majority leader, McConnell will set the Senate’s agenda. Along with House Speaker John Boehner, he will decide what legislation is sent to the White House in the final two years of President Barack Obama’s term.

McConnell was elected to a sixth Senate term last week in elections in which Republicans gained a majority for the first time in eight years.

He will formally assume his duties as majority leader in January. Democrats have assailed him in recent campaigns as a guardian of gridlock for his opposition to nearly all of President Barack Obama’s initiatives. At the same time, decorations in his office in the Capitol include two paintings and a bust of Henry Clay, a 19th century Kentuckian known as the Great Compromiser who favored government development of roads and bridges in a young America.

“I had maybe naively hoped the president would look at the results of the election and decide to come to the political center and do some business with us,” McConnell told reporters. “I still hope he does at some point, but the early signs are not good.”

Senate Republicans had only one contested leadership race, and selected Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi to chair the party’s campaign committee for the 2016 elections. He defeated Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada.

John Cornyn of Texas becomes majority whip; John Thune of South Dakota will be Republican Conference chair; John Barrasso of Wyoming will be Senate Republican Policy chair; and Roy Blunt of Missouri will be Senate Republican Conference vice chair.

Neither McConnell nor Boehner faced public opposition on the eve of Thursday’s party elections in closed-door meetings. If the sessions were celebratory occasions for Republicans, they were less than that for Democrats, who took a pounding in the Nov. 4 midterm elections.

After eight years in the minority, Senate Republicans picked up at least eight seats from Democrats and are still hoping for a ninth in a Louisiana runoff set for Dec. 6.

The party also padded its majority in the House, where a handful of races remain unresolved. Republicans are on track to equal or eclipse the 246 they won in 1946, a figure that stands as a post-World War II high.