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MAGA influencers, including Elon Musk, tried to pressure GOP senators to elect Rick Scott.
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But instead they chose Senator John Thune, a long-serving senator and occasional critic of Trump.
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This may be largely due to the fact that the vote was by secret ballot.
Elon Musk could help get Donald Trump elected president, and he is poised to play a key role in the newly elected president’s next administration.
But this week it became clear that his influence, and the influence of the online MAGA right more broadly, is not felt as strongly behind closed doors on Capitol Hill.
On Wednesday morning, Republican senators and senators elected the current second-ranking Republican, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, as the next Senate majority leader.
Musk and other Trump allies stood behind Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who has long cast himself as an enemy of the Republican establishment and sought to capitalize on his status as a staunch Trump loyalist.
Scott received just thirteen votes, just three more than he won when he challenged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the top spot after the 2022 midterm elections. After Scott was eliminated in the first round of voting, Thune defeated his second-strongest challenger, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, by a 29-24 margin.
It wasn’t for a lack of efforts by Scott’s allies, including Musk, who waged a days-long campaign on social media to rally GOP senators behind the Florida senator.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a supporter of Scott, told reporters on Tuesday that Musk’s support was “huge” and that the billionaire businessman and other conservative figures “realize that we need a change here in the way Congress operates .”
If you judged the race solely based on online chatter, Scott might have appeared to be in the lead. Scott even spent much of Sunday and Monday running the betting website Polymarket.
A secret ballot protected senators from public pressure
There is an important reason why the pressure campaign did not work: the vote took place by secret ballot, rather than in public.
Very few senators announced their votes in advance, and many still have not, making it difficult for MAGA activists to target those who voted for anyone other than Scott.
“It is completely unacceptable that we hold secret ballots to elect a Senate majority leader,” said Charlie Kirk, the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA. “They’re afraid of you.”
The pressure campaign quickly became heated. Musk said Thune was the Democrats’ “top choice,” while Tucker Carlson called Cornyn an “angry liberal.” Opponents brought up both senators’ years of anti-Trump posts and comments, including Thune’s call for Trump to withdraw from the race in 2016.
The online campaign apparently irritated some senators who felt they were being pressured on an issue that should be up to the senators’ discretion, not the public.
“They’re trying to bully us. That’s not how these elections work,” said one Republican senator told anonymously Punchbowl News.
Scott’s supporters, meanwhile, hoped a public campaign would soften the impact of the secret ballot. And some were dismissive of the idea that public pressure was unwanted.
“I hope the voters come forward. There’s nothing wrong with that, no one should be offended by it,” Johnson said ahead of the vote. “If I were eligible to vote, I would say, ‘I want to know exactly how you’re going to vote.'”
After Scott lost, the reaction online was somewhat muted. Musk congratulated Thune, while the Florida senator issued a statement saying he will “do everything possible to ensure that John Thune is successful in achieving President Trump’s agenda.
The phrase “McConnell 2.0” quickly began to trend on X after the vote, spurred by right-wing accounts who believe Thune will be a continuation of the status quo.
“I think Rick Scott would have gotten a lot fewer votes if we hadn’t had a public pressure campaign,” conservative media personality Benny Johnson said on his show after the vote. “They thought they were going to sneak into this leadership vote in the dark of night. The pressure is on now and John Thune better bow down to MAGA for its very existence.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
