Kentucky Senator and current Republican Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, has won revalidation of his seat after a secret Republican Party vote on Wednesday.
McConnell has prevailed over Rick Scott, elected by Florida and who on Tuesday announced his candidacy promising «a great change» that he considered necessary after the Democrats managed to maintain control of the upper chamber in the last elections.
McConnell now aspires to become the longest-serving Senate GOP leader in the country’s history. Scott, for his part, ran as the Kentucky senator’s first rival in the last 15 years, according to CNN.
McConnell’s spokesman, David Popp, confirmed his victory, although he did not provide further details. The aforementioned U.S. network has indicated that the Republican minority leader in the Senate has managed to revalidate his seat with 37 votes in favor, ten against and one abstention, according to sources in the upper chamber.
The secret vote within the Republican Party has been surrounded by controversy, since some members of the party had asked to wait for the final results of the elections in the state of Georgia – a race that will be decided in a second round – to finally choose who will be their leader in the Senate.
Regardless of the results of this vote, the Democrats have managed to maintain control of the upper chamber with 50 senators. In the event that the Republicans win the senator from Georgia, there would be a 50-50 tie that would be broken by the vice president of the country, Kamala Harris, as has happened in the last two years since Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
