Sen. James Lankford, Architect of Failed Senate Pro-Migration Bill, Seeks Leadership Spot

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), only weeks after his signature legislative achievement went down in flames, announced Wednesday he will run for Vice Chair of the Senate Republican Conference.

The musical chairs inside Senate Republican leadership began in earnest in late February when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced he would retire at the end of this Congress from his perch atop the Republican Conference. McConnell made his announcement after reports of unprecedented threats to his leadership fueled by his unpopular promotion of Ukraine funding.

McConnell had tasked Lankford with leading the negotiations to unlock that foreign aid funding. While Lankford succeeded in creating a compromise overwhelming supporting by Democrats, conservatives eviscerated the deal, killing it and exposing long-festering issues inside the conference many believe contributed to the leadership shakeup.

The position of Vice Chair, fifth in Republican leadership, opened when Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) announced she would seek to move up one spot by running for policy chair.

“The Senate Republican Conference Vice Chair plays a vital role in serving Republican Senators and their staff as they communicate the conservative policy ideas that make our nation stronger,” Lankford said in statement. “As Senators, we were elected to do hard things and to solve problems by doing the right thing, the right way. It is my desire to serve our Conference in every way I can as we work together to solve the challenges our nation faces. I will personally ask each of my colleagues for their support in the days ahead and look forward to discussing with them ways we can work together to serve the nation.”

Lankford is best known for spending months negotiating the bipartisan migration and foreign aid bill that promised to alleviate the border crisis but was killed within hours of its release after it was exposed the bill actually invited a greater flow of migration. Amid a conservative uprising over the bill, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) promised not to bring it up for a vote in the House – dooming its prospects of becoming law – calling it “even worse than we expected” after numerous troubling provisions had leaked.

Even McConnell, who had tasked Lankford with crafting a deal with border provisions palatable to Democrats in order to unlock billions in Ukraine funding, recognized the bill’s unpopularity and turned against the deal.

Lankford was criticized leading up to and during the bill’s rollout for disputing damning leaked details of his bill that turned out to be true – or, in some cases, were not even as bad as the final bill. Perhaps most infamously, Lankford said “it would be absolutely absurd for me to agree to 5,000 people a day” referring to leaks that the bill’s emergency declaration would not be triggered until 5,000 migrants crossed the border in a single day. Lankford called those reports by Breitbart News and others “internet rumors.”

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Yet the final bill was even worse. The bill would allow up to 8,500 migrants to cross the border in a single day without triggering the declaration of an emergency. And despite being promoted by Lankford as a border security bill, the legislation provided 75 times as much funding to Ukraine as it did to a U.S./Mexico border wall.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Lankford’s partner in authoring the legislation, said upon its release that “the border never closes” under the deal, a correct assessment that further undermined the bill’s support. In an email obtained by Breitbart News, Lankford’s staff resorted to begging for public support to stem the tide of opposition to the legislation.

Republicans are expected to vote for their new leadership slate soon after the November elections.

Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.