Hillary Clinton’s Potential Senate GOP Partners

Set aside, for a mo­ment, the last sev­er­al years of Wash­ing­ton his­tory, and en­vi­sion a Demo­crat­ic pres­id­ent and Re­pub­lic­ans in the Sen­ate who can ac­tu­ally forge a halfway de­cent re­la­tion­ship.

The case for why Hil­lary Clin­ton might be able to make pro­gress on Cap­it­ol Hill is that she has a his­tory of work­ing with Re­pub­lic­ans and would be open to for­ging new re­la­tion­ships. And her run­ning mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Vir­gin­ia, says he could help. “I have very good re­la­tions with Re­pub­lic­ans in the Sen­ate,” Kaine told the As­so­ci­ated Press re­cently. “There’s some people who really want to get some good work done.”

The trick for Clin­ton would be identi­fy­ing the small hand­ful of Re­pub­lic­ans will­ing to col­lab­or­ate, and the key is­sues where com­prom­ise is pos­sible. Some of the ob­vi­ous choices are the party’s lim­ited num­ber of mod­er­ates, such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Here are eight oth­er Re­pub­lic­an sen­at­ors whom she could tar­get, and why.

Bob Cork­er. The For­eign Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee chair­man was a key play­er in the weird saga that un­fol­ded over le­gis­la­tion to en­able law­suits by fam­il­ies of 9-11 vic­tims against Saudi Ar­a­bia. The Sen­ate over­whelm­ingly over­rode Pres­id­ent Obama’s veto in Septem­ber, but Cork­er and many oth­ers also fear un­in­ten­ded con­sequences for the U.S.—and are hope­ful that the meas­ure can be altered. Clin­ton’s cam­paign has said she would have signed the bill. Still, ne­go­ti­at­ing changes can’t be ruled out, es­pe­cially if some of the feared blow­back—such as law­suits against U.S. of­fi­cials in oth­er coun­tries—starts to ar­rive.

Jeff Flake and John Mc­Cain. Clin­ton already has something in com­mon with this pair: None of them sup­port Don­ald Trump. Flake has al­ways been a “Nev­er Trump” guy; Mc­Cain yanked his back­ing after the tape sur­faced of Trump brag­ging about sexu­ally grop­ing wo­men without their con­sent. Look­ing for­ward, both could be im­port­ant ne­go­ti­at­ors in re­vived ef­forts to move a sweep­ing im­mig­ra­tion over­haul. Mc­Cain and Flake were mem­bers of the bi­par­tis­an “Gang of Eight” that steered a bill through the Sen­ate floor back in 2013. Which brings us to an­oth­er mem­ber of that gang…

Lind­sey Gra­ham. The South Car­o­lina Re­pub­lic­an nev­er got on the Trump train either. He’s a po­ten­tial ally for Clin­ton when it comes to Syr­ia, where she has ex­pressed sup­port for a more in­ter­ven­tion­ist policy than Obama has pur­sued. Both Gra­ham and Clin­ton back es­tab­lish­ment of a no-fly zone. Gra­ham has praised Clin­ton over the years (though he cri­ti­cized her dur­ing his failed White House run), and they worked to­geth­er as part of a group that pushed le­gis­la­tion through the Sen­ate to im­prove health care for mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Guard and Re­serve.

Chuck Grass­ley. One of the big prob­lems with the Af­ford­able Care Act is that Con­gress can’t come to­geth­er to fix prob­lems with it. Re­pub­lic­ans aren’t in­ter­ested in help­ing Demo­crats make fixes to a law that they want to scrap. But with a Demo­crat­ic pres­id­ency and time fur­ther ce­ment­ing the law, some Re­pub­lic­ans might be will­ing to soften their party’s pos­ture. Grass­ley told Morn­ing Con­sult re­cently: “As a prac­tic­al mat­ter, our Con­sti­tu­tion re­quires you to work with the pres­id­ent, even if you dis­agree with them.” The Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee chair­man is also a key back­er of bi­par­tis­an crim­in­al-justice-re­form le­gis­la­tion, which brings us to an­oth­er back­er of that bill…

Mike Lee. The Utah Re­pub­lic­an, an­oth­er Nev­er Trump-er, has put a lot of work in­to build­ing con­sensus on crim­in­al-justice re­form. But Lee and oth­ers were un­able to con­vince Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell to bring up bi­par­tis­an le­gis­la­tion to re­form sen­ten­cing laws for non­vi­ol­ent drug of­fend­ers and help ease pris­on­ers’ trans­ition back in­to so­ci­ety. Clin­ton, too, has made crim­in­al-justice re­form a pri­or­ity is­sue.

Lamar Al­ex­an­der. The chair­man of the Health, Edu­ca­tion, Labor, and Pen­sions Com­mit­tee has ex­per­i­ence with the days when co­oper­a­tion was a more com­mon thing. And even in the present era, he worked with Demo­crat­ic Sen. Patty Mur­ray on the bi­par­tis­an 2015 over­haul of No Child Left Be­hind that Obama signed late last year. Else­where, bi­par­tis­an med­ic­al-in­nov­a­tion le­gis­la­tion on both cham­bers, an ini­ti­at­ive the Ten­ness­ee Re­pub­lic­an has helped to steer, could be re­vived next year if it doesn’t cross the fin­ish line in the lame duck.

John Bar­rasso. He’s likely to chair the En­vir­on­ment and Pub­lic Works Com­mit­tee if Re­pub­lic­ans hold onto the Sen­ate. The Wyom­ing Re­pub­lic­an would be poised to be a key play­er in the big in­fra­struc­ture pack­age that Clin­ton will make an early pri­or­ity. Bar­rasso, to be sure, is of­ten a par­tis­an brawl­er as head of the Re­pub­lic­an Policy Com­mit­tee. But he’s not averse to big in­fra­struc­ture meas­ures per se—he voted for huge trans­port­a­tion and wa­ter-in­fra­struc­ture meas­ures in the cur­rent Con­gress.

(Image via Flickr user Gage Skidmore)