Sen. Mike Lee Backs Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader After Candidate Forum

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is backing Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) as his top choice for Senate Majority Leader after hosting a candidate forum on Tuesday, listing his takeaways from the session and urging his colleagues to join him.

The candidate forum, organized by Sen. Lee, featured the three contenders seeking to take the reins from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), 82.

Breitbart News detailed:

Several senators discussed the importance of opening up the floor to consider legislation, the need to permit debate on the Senate floor and internally among Republican Senators, and the best leadership strategies and styles to move President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Most senators kept their preferences hidden after the forum.

But Lee is not one of those individuals. Following the forum, he announced that he is formally backing Scott and walked through his takeaways from the forum.

In recent years, the Utah senator said, the Senate has “ceased to function as [“the world’s greatest deliberative body,”] … as majority leaders from both political parties have consolidated power at the expense of nearly every other senator.”

“Senators are supposed to have ample opportunity to debate, discuss, and amend important legislation, and the Senate rules offer important procedural protections to ensure such outcomes,” Lee said. “Those rules have been short-circuited by leaders of both parties, empowering what I sometimes describe (in the current configuration of Congress) as ‘The Law Firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson, & Jeffries,’ or simply ‘The Firm,'” he continued, noting that the agenda of the “Firm” is bad for both the Senate and ultimately, for the American people.

“For that reason, I’ve been calling on those running to become the next Senate GOP leader to agree to a series of reforms designed to restore rules, customs, and practices that in the past helped earn the Senate the (currently inaccurate) title of ‘the world’s greatest deliberative body,'” he said, making it clear that he personally likes all three candidates — Cornyn, Thune, and Scott — but that Scott “stands out as the most aggressively reform-minded candidate.” He cited the Florida senator’s “specific, aggressive plan for restoring the Senate’s most time-honored traditions, rooted in its rules.”

He also said he believes Scott’s approach is “most closely aligned with and focused on helping President Trump enact his legislative agenda, which is supported by more than 75 million American voters.”

“With this in mind, I wholeheartedly endorse Rick Scott, and respectfully urge my colleagues—particularly those who agree that bold reforms are badly needed—to do the same,” he urged.

“All three candidates offered helpful perspectives on how our conference should operate, and I found the entire discussion refreshing and productive. But Rick Scott’s approach stands out, and that’s why I’ll be casting my vote for him,” Lee continued, adding that Scott has “consistently called out abuses of the Senate GOP leader position in the past—even when it was difficult and at times politically costly to him.”

“This is yet another reason to support him,” he added.

Lee joins the ranks of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has also come out in strong support of Scott over the others, citing the Florida senator’s skillset and blasting McConnell as operating as a one-man dictator.

“Mr. McConnell ran a one-man dictatorship,” he told Breitbart News Daily. “We had no idea what his strategy was.”