Profile in courage? Hardly. Thune aspires to be Senate majority leader, so questions legitimacy of Trump’s convictions

On May 30, when the Manhattan jury delivered their historic verdict in a state courtroom that Donald Trump was guilty of all 34 felony counts involving his disguised hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, South Dakota's senior Sen. John Thune was on an airplane.

When the plane landed, Thune hurriedly issued a statement: “This case was politically motivated from the beginning, and today’s verdict does nothing to absolve the partisan nature of this prosecution.”

Then Thune (seen above in a public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons) changed the subject. “(We) cannot survive four more years of Joe Biden. With President Trump in the White House and a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, we can finally end the disastrous Biden-Schumer agenda that’s crushing American families and businesses.”

Thune’s reference to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, is not an accident. He eagerly covets Schumer’s job, and with Mitch McConnell of Kentucky stepping down as the minority leader, Thune’s chances look pretty good. John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida also aspire to replace McConnell, but Thune may be the odds-on favorite within the Republican caucus. 

While he pointedly refers to President Trump running against Joe Biden, there is good reason to believe that Thune is not thrilled with Trump’s status as the GOP standard bearer this year. When Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination months ago, Thune rushed to his side and offered his endorsement of his colleague.

Of course, Scott’s candidacy quickly fizzled, and he has since bent over backwards to suck up to Trump, hoping to be chosen as the vice presidential running mate. In retrospect, Thune might have done better to endorse another South Carolina candidate, former governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Thune’s expression of contempt for the New York jury verdict may play well in Republican circles, but it appears to be a minority view across the country. While Trump raked in huge donations from his base in the wake of the verdict, a Morning Consult poll taken on June 1 revealed that 54% of registered voters nationally approve of the jury verdict, while just 34% disapprove.

Trump acolytes including House Speaker Mike Johnson darkly suggest that President Biden somehow orchestrated the New York state court outcome, but swing voters in swing states may have a different opinion.

Republicans appear to have an excellent chance of regaining a majority in the U.S. Senate, so Thune may well replace Schumer as majority leader. Currently, Democrats and independents who caucus with them hold a tenuous 51-49 majority in the upper chamber. However, in this fall’s elections, Democrats will be defending 23 Senate seats, while Republicans will only be defending 11 seats.

In West Virginia, Democrat turned Independent Joe Manchin is not running for re-election, and there is a strong consensus that his seat will go Republican. In addition, eight more Democratic Senate seats are considered to be quite vulnerable.

Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jon Tester of Montana, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin are all in tough races, representing states that voted for Trump in 2020 or that are considered swing states this year.

In addition, Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan is not running for re-election, and the race for her seat appears to be a tossup. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another Democrat who has turned independent, is walking away from the job, and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego is in a competitive race with Trump conspiracy theorist Kari Lake, who narrowly lost the governorship two years ago.

Maryland is a strongly Democratic state, but its senior Sen. Ben Cardin is retiring, and the Democratic nominee for his seat, Angela Alsobrooks, who is the county executive in Prince George's County, a heavily black D.C. suburb, is in a very competitive race against former Gov. Larry Hogan, a very popular (and moderate) Republican. 

On the other side, only three Republican Senate seats appear to be competitive this year. They are held by Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rick Scott of Florida, and Josh Hawley of Missouri. Cruz barely won his race six years ago, but Texas and Florida are exceedingly expensive states in which to wage a campaign. 

Hawley, whose wife argued the reproductive rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, is remembered for giving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists a raised fist salute, and then running from them like a scared rabbit once they breached the Capitol. 

In any event, John Thune from Murdo, S.D., appears to have an excellent chance of becoming the Senate majority leader, like the man he defeated back in 2004, Tom Daschle.

If Donald Trump manages to win the presidency, it is an open question whether Thune will have the backbone to resist Trump’s inevitable assaults on democracy and the rule of law.

Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney who regularly writes for The South Dakota Standard.