Conservatives take aim at McConnell's fundraising strength in GOP civil war

The civil war within the Senate GOP conference is getting heated as conservatives step up calls to curb the power of the next Senate Republican leader, while current Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s (Ky.) mainstream and moderate allies warn the changes could make the upper chamber as chaotic as the House.

Conservatives led by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have called for putting a term limit on the next leader and demanded more control of the Senate floor.

And now some are calling to decentralize or break up the powerful fundraising network aligned with McConnell, which has given him an enormous amount of influence even though the GOP leader does not legally control the outside groups that are pivotal in Senate battleground states.

“I think the idea that a leader would use outside money, much of it dark money, to try and intimidate or threaten members of the caucus is frankly corrupt. And I think it’s a corrupt practice that has gone on for far too long, and it needs to end,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said of McConnell’s affiliation with the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), which is run by his former chief of staff, Steven Law.

Hawley called for curbing the next Senate GOP leader’s fundraising power after McConnell told conservative Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who is also pushing for Republican conference reforms, at a lunch meeting last week that he likely wouldn’t have been elected to the Senate without the help of SLF.

A source familiar with the meeting said McConnell also directed his comments at Johnson, one of his most outspoken critics.

McConnell also pointedly reminded Hawley and other Republican senators about the importance of SLF in October, after Hawley introduced a bill to ban publicly traded companies from making independent expenditures and giving money to super PACs.   

McConnell warned GOP senators last fall that they would face “incoming” from the center-right and corporate America if they backed Hawley’s bill and read aloud a list of senators who had received substantial support from the outside fundraising group.

A Senate Republican aide said conservatives now want rank-and-file senators to have more say in how to direct tens of millions of dollars that flow through the SLF and another outside group aligned with McConnell, One Nation.

The aide said McConnell uses his fundraising network to "maintain his grip over the conference or ensure there are enough votes to advance his priorities and the things he says need to get done." 

The source said conservatives want to see a more “democratized conference” and view McConnell’s influence over SLF and One Nation as vesting too much power in the leader.  

One proposal floated has been to establish an advisory board of Senate Republicans that would help guide the support of outside groups, but that idea is already coming under fire from critics within the GOP conference who warn that it would violate campaign finance law, which requires outside groups to operate outside senators’ control.

Another proposal is to break up the two main outside fundraising groups into a network of smaller groups.

McConnell recently distanced himself from the spending decisions of SLF when asked about the group’s decision to pour money into several key Senate battlegrounds but not Maryland, where the GOP leader recruited former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to run for retiring Sen. Ben Cardin’s (D-Md.) seat.

“As you know that’s an outside group, I recommend you call them for comment,” he told reporters last month when asked to comment on One Nation’s spending strategy.

Some in the Senate are pushing back on the idea of weakening the leader’s power.

A second Senate Republican aide warned doing so would undercut his ability to run the conference efficiently and possibly make it tougher to govern if Republicans regain control of the Senate.

The aide pointed to the dysfunction that racked the House GOP conference for much of 2023 and part of 2024 after House conservatives insisted on reforms to weaken the Speaker’s power at the start of the 118th Congress.

“They started chopping up the Speaker’s position and they can’t govern. Senate Republicans pride themselves on not being as chaotic,” said the source.

The other area of debate that’s heating up is whether to limit the next Senate GOP leader to a six-year term and whether to reform the conference rules to give rank-and-file senators more opportunity to offer amendments.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), an adviser to McConnell’s leadership team, circulated a letter to colleagues Monday warning that “weakening the leader would be counter-productive” to enhancing discipline within the conference.

He pointed out that the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), has substantially more power within his conference than the Republican leader does and reminded fellow GOP senators that they sometimes envy what they view as the better discipline among Senate Democrats.

Tillis argued that it’s “important that we consider proposals to strengthen not weaken the Republican Conference leader position when we fully engage in this discussion this fall.”

He pointed out that the Senate Democratic leader is not constrained by a term limit, has greater power to dole out coveted committee assignments, has more control over conference meetings and lunches, and has more latitude in picking the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Senate conservatives viewed Tillis’s letter as an argument from McConnell’s camp that rank-and-file Republican senators already enjoy more independence and autonomy than Democratic senators and should back off their demands to further “democratize” the conference.

“It clearly was a McConnell-driven response,” said a third Senate GOP aide, who requested anonymity to comment on the internal debate over reforms to the Senate GOP leadership structure. “Tillis is seen as like, McConnell’s axe man in some ways.”

Tillis also floated other changes to the Senate Republican Conference rules that some Senate insiders viewed as a subtle rebuke to conservative colleagues who sometimes object to fellow Republican senators getting a vote on an amendment if their own amendments are left out of floor agreement.

Tillis proposed adopting guiding principles for the conference to discourage colleagues from objecting to proceeding to appropriations bills that are reported out of committee with bipartisan support and to discourage them from objecting to fellow Republicans getting amendments pending to a bill.

He said conservative colleagues should allow each member of the GOP conference to get at least one amendment pending to a bill before asking for a second member, alluding to past floor debates in which conservative senators demanded votes on multiple amendments.

And Tillis said colleagues shouldn’t object to a vote on a fellow Republican senator’s amendment if that amendment is germane to the bill on the floor.

The overall tone of the letter was interpreted by aides to conservative senators as an effort to force their bosses to play defense after they called to water down the Senate Republican leader’s power.  

One conservative Senate aide called the thrust of Tillis’s letter “shocking.”

The aide argued that party leaders have throttled the floor debate more than any other senators by regularly using floor procedures to block amendments. 

The source said there's broad desire to reform the conference rules after McConnell's long reign as GOP leader, which has lasted nearly two decades.