Conservative firebrand Mike Lee, who is frequently at odds with his own leadership in the Senate, has lately found a more sympathetic ear across the Capitol.
The Utah Republican said he frequently trades ideas with the House Speaker Mike Johnson, who since assuming the top job has cultivated ties to Senate hard-liners who often prefer confrontation to compromise.
“If you think of anything that’s come up in the last few weeks since he’s been speaker, I’ve talked to him about it,” said Lee, who introduced Johnson last month at a GOP conference briefing on national security.
Such liaisons have helped Johnson understand the dynamics of a chamber that he has little familiarity with and communicate the thinking of House conservatives on key issues to their Senate counterparts.
But Johnson’s approach risks exacerbating the partisan tensions that have contributed to stalemates on key issues including spending bills, foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel, border policy, and farm legislation. Movement on any of those issues will involve working with the Senate’s GOP leadership, who are more moderate and pragmatic than their House counterparts, and Senate Democrats who control the agenda.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said of Johnson’s communication with leadership and GOP moderates that “the outreach is probably going to be predicated upon, you know, who the speaker needs to talk to, and what the subject is. So I suspect that’s going to vary.”
Johnson hasn’t ignored Senate leadership, meeting regularly with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell either one-on-one or in classified briefings for congressional leadership. His interactions with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Johnson are less frequent, but they communicate as needed.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said her colleagues regularly talking with Johnson “represent a pretty extreme faction” of the conference that wants to slash funding for the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for helping Israel. “How productive is that? That is a rhetorical question.”
This story is based on on-the-record interviews with over a dozen senators and conversations with nine sources granted anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations.
Relative Obscurity
Johnson ascended to the speakership in late October from relative obscurity. His relatively recent election to the House and his previously minor role in House leadership as the conference’s vice chairman before former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) ouster left him little time to build allies in Congress needed to move key legislation.
Lee along with Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) meet regularly as a group with the speaker, which have included talks on national-security spending, stopgap government appropriations, and reauthorization of surveillance authorities, Scott said.
Scott said he didn’t know Johnson before his ascension. “But we got a lot of mutual friends,” Scott said.
The three conservative senators dine weekly at Scott’s Capitol Hill townhouse with hard-liners in the House like outgoing Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Bob Good (R-Va.), the incoming head of the Freedom Caucus.
The trio of senators have become some of the loudest voices in favor of attaching stricter controls on immigration at the southern border to the White House’s request for aid to Ukraine, giving the speaker bicameral allies in the effort to attach stricter immigration policies to a broader international security package.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who also has a history of challenging leadership, said he and Johnson dined shortly after the latter came to Washington and now have spoken regularly in the course of Congress’ biggest policy debates. Both built their careers pursuing cases aimed at preserving their clients’ First Amendment rights to religious practice.
Cruz, the Senate sponsor of companion legislation to House Republicans’ border package, said “I certainly hope” the relationship has helped craft the biggest bills coming out of Congress.
He said Johnson in meetings with the whole conference has worked to bridge gaps between his conference and Senate Republicans, who under McConnell’s leadership have usually favored larger spending packages and robust aid to Ukraine that their House counterparts have rebuffed.
“That is not typical behavior for his predecessors,” Cruz said of Johnson’s outreach. “It reflects a desire to enhance the cooperation between the two chambers. I think that’s a worthwhile objective.”
Johnson twice since taking the gavel has spoken at Senate Republicans’ regular lunch meetings, first early on to pitch legislation that extended government funding last month (
“Obviously, Speaker Johnson is a very conservative leader, and I think that’s a natural fit,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), a member of Republican leadership, an appropriator, and former member of the House. But Capito added his lunch meetings with the whole conference are important to get the broader perspective. “He probably needs to hear from all voices,” she said.
Johnson’s predecessor, McCarthy, spoke regularly McConnell to coordinate strategy even if they couldn’t always agree on how to fund the government or whether to aid Ukraine. He made early overtures to Senate GOP appropriators looking for leverage despite their position in the minority and worked with Senate leadership to avoid a shutdown at the end of September.
Johnson came to the House in 2016, an election on former President Donald Trump’s coattails that swept in high-profile GOP lawmakers ranging ideologically from Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) to former Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.).
They also included at least two future senators. Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Ted Budd (R-N.C.) were elected to the Senate in recent years.
Marshall said he communicates “several times a week” with his former classmate. He said they the share “the same set” of “Judeo-Christian values that this nation was raised on.”
“Whatever I can do to put wind beneath his sails,” Marshall said. “Count me on the Mike Johnson team.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said he speaks with Johnson roughly weekly. Mullin was assigned as Johnson’s mentor after the latter’s 2016 election, in part because Johnson’s western Louisiana district sat fewer than 75 miles from Mullin’s in eastern Oklahoma.
Now Mullin is on the Senate’s whip team as Republicans in both chambers gauge support for must-pass bills.
Louisiana Links
Johnson stays in touch with Bayou State colleagues, even if his day-to-day focus is more with more national policy and political issues.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R), Louisiana’s senior senator, said he continues to trade text messages since Johnson won the gavel to discuss parochial concerns.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said he also he’s talked with him “a lot” to offer the Senate’s perspective on House, “about which bridge to burn, which bridge to cross.”
“I go way back with Mike,” Kennedy said. Both came to Washington in 2017 from Baton Rouge, where Johnson sat in the state House of Representatives for two years while Kennedy was the state’s treasurer.
“One of Mike’s biggest strengths is the fact that he’s just a nice guy,” Kennedy said. “Disliking Mike Johnson is like disliking golden retrievers.”
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