Kyl’s sights on No. 2 GOP post

Arizona’s Jon Kyl appears to have a short and easy path to become Senate minority whip, the No. 2 leadership position among Republicans, allowing the senator to start outlining his agenda in the post.

Kyl running for minority whip

Read Paul Giblin's blog, Checking In

Republican senators have scheduled their leadership elections for Dec. 6, and no other challengers have emerged on the scene. Kyl is trying to succeed Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who announced Monday that he plans to retire before the end of the year.

“They’ve done a pretty good job of clearing the field for him and avoiding a contentious race,” said Jennifer Duffy, editor of The Cook Political Report, a Washington-based newsletter. “It happened quick. Quicker than I expected.”

Actually, the transition has been in the works for some time, Kyl said during an interview in his Phoenix office Wednesday. Lott and Kyl had spoken privately about it.

“He and I have been very close, and he is the one who said, ‘You know, I’m not going to be around here for my whole term. I’m going to step down at some point,’” Kyl said. “He knew that several months ago and he said, ‘You ought to start putting your team in place to succeed me,’ which I did.”

Kyl quietly asked a few key senators to be prepared to solicit support for him when Lott eventually decided to step aside. The exact timing of that announcement came as something of a surprise, though.

“I thought Trent would make an announcement during a weekday,” Kyl said. “Well, he called me on Sunday afternoon and said, ‘News is getting out and you better get your calls made if that’s what you want to do.’ And because I had folks ready to go, we were able to do that.”

Kyl and his selected supporters, whom he declined to identify, called the remaining members of the Republican caucus to solicit support and votes for Kyl to finish the final year of Lott’s two-year term as whip. By Wednesday, Kyl’s ascension from his current post in the No. 3 leadership position seemed all but certain.

The No. 2 leadership position will give the 65-year-old senator a seat at the table, both literally and figuratively. Generally when the president holds meetings with Congressional leaders, the invitations are extended to the party leaders and whips.

“Kyl’s job is going to be simple, yet incredibly tough,” Duffy said, “Keep the party together on votes, and to be part of a team that tries to strike compromise in the rare occasion in the Senate lately that it comes up.”

If Kyl is elected to the post, he will gain a larger role in developing national Republican policies and be responsible for corralling votes from GOP senators to support those policies. Pushing the GOP agenda became more difficult when the Democrats gained control of the Senate in 2006.

In some ways, the minority party always is on defense, reacting to the majority party’s leads.

“The one great power of the majority leader is to set the agenda, decide what comes up next,” Kyl said. “That doesn’t mean that the Republicans in the minority don’t have a legislative agenda. There are certain things we would like to see get done. It’s not as easy for us to get things done as it is to stop things.”

The Republicans’ top three immediate items: securing funding for U.S. troops in Iraq, passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and extending a round of tax cuts that are set to expire in 2010.

While all three matters are important to President Bush and Republicans, Democrats have been reluctant to guide legislation needed to pass the measures, Kyl said.

“The legislation that authorizes our foreign intelligence gathering expires in the first part of February and we’ve got to get that re-authorized. That’s something, for whatever reasons, a lot of the Democrats and their leadership have been dragging their feet on,” Kyl said.

Furthermore, unless Congress extends the current tax rates, taxes on income, inheritances, capitol gains and dividends will increase automatically to their previous higher levels.

“There is a lot of uncertainly what the tax rates will be. It would be much better to have those rates set so that people can plan. So we would like to see some legislative action to extend the current tax rates,” he said.

To some degree, the leadership position may indirectly limit Kyl’s opportunities to advance legislation that would benefit Arizona directly. Instead, he will be expected to approach his position from a broader party standpoint.

“You have to be careful about moving the agenda of your state. That’s not why you do these things,” he said. “Yes, it gives me a better opportunity to be in the middle of things and to advocate the interests of the state of Arizona, but you don’t take advantage of your leadership position just to push your own state agenda.”