USDA photo by Lance Cheung.After 18 years of Mitch McConnell, Senate Republicans officially have a new top dog: South Dakota Senator John Thune will step into the Majority Leader role at the beginning of next year, after being selected by his colleagues Wednesday. Two of Thune’s fellow Republican Senators competed for the position—John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida, the later of whom earned endorsements from Donald Trump loyalists Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., although not the president-elect himself. Thune defeated Cornyn 29 to 24 in the second round of voting; in an earlier vote, Scott received the least support and was cut from the race. The majority leader is widely regarded as the Senate’s most influential figure, meaning that Thune will be a key player in advancing Republican interests now that the party has reclaimed the chamber and also controls the House, White House, and Supreme Court. Here are five things to know about him. 1. He was born and raised in South Dakota Thune was born in Pierre, South Dakota’s capital, in 1961. He grew up in Murdo, a nearby town with a few hundred residents. Thune’s father, Harold, was a fighter pilot in the Pacific theater during World War II; he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service. Harold was the son of a Norwegian immigrant, Nicholas Thune, who ran a chain of hardware stores in the Murdo area along with his brother. Thune’s mother, Yvonne, was born in Saskatchewan, Canada. According to Thune, his passion for politics grew out of a chance encounter he had playing basketball as a high school freshman. During the game, Thune had made five of six free throws. “He was later greeted by a spectator who said, ‘I noticed you missed one,'”  Thune’s website reads. “That spectator happened to be a well-known sports enthusiast and then-South Dakota U.S. Rep. Jim Abdnor.” A decade later, in 1985, Thune kicked off his political career as legislative aide to Abdnor, who was a Senator by then and later led the Small Business Administration under President Ronald Reagan. You can’t make this stuff up. 2. He has a long history in Republican politics After his time with Abdnor, Thune led South Dakota Republicans as the party’s executive director until 1991, when Governor George Mickelson appointed him the state’s railroad director. Thune held that post until 1993, when he embarked upon a brief flirtation with nonpartisanship as executive director of the nonprofit South Dakota Municipal League. Three years later, Thune jumped back into the political game by running for South Dakota’s only House seat, beating then-Lieutenant Governor Carole Hillard by a comfortable margin in the Republican primary—a race in which he was”very much an underdog,” according to the Almanac of American Politics. Thune won the general election with nearly 60 percent of the vote, and went on to score landslide victories in two subsequent House reelection campaigns. After losing his first Senate run in 2002 by a mere 524 votes, Thune ran a successful campaign to unseat Tom Daschle in 2004. Daschle, who was leading Senate Democrats at the time, became the first incumbent floor leader since 1952 to lose reelection. The face-off between Thune and Daschle, which garnered widespread media attention as the most expensive Senate race that year, awarded Thune some national clout as a GOP up-and-comer. By the time the 2010 Senate race rolled around, Thune was so popular that state Democrats didn’t bother to put up a rival candidate. Since 2021, Thune has served as minority whip, meaning his promotion to majority leader will take him from being the Senate Republicans’ No. 2 guy to No. 1. In way, he has simply been promoted! 3. He’s wasn’t onboard with overturning the 2020 election While Thune was not the MAGA set’s first choice for majority leader, he sounds eager to collaborate, releasing a statement after his win affirming that the Senate’s “Republican team is united behind President Trump’s agenda.” But Thune might have to work a little extra hard to stay in the president-elect’s good graces. In 2021, Trump slammed Thune as a “RINO” and publicly (albeit unsuccessfully) urged South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to challenge him in the state’s Republican Senate primary.  Trump’s condemnation of Thune came after the senator refused to challenge the 2020 presidential election results. It appears the whole ordeal had Thune seriously considering retirement. 4. His wife has also worked in politics Thune met his wife, Kimberley, when they were both attending Biola University, a Christian college outside Los Angeles—coincidentally, both grew up in South Dakota. The couple are evangelical Christians. They’ve been married since 1984, so she has seen him through the whole of his political career. Together, they have two daughters and five grandchildren. The pair is a South Dakota political power couple of sorts. During her husband’s days working on the Hill with Abdnor, Kimberley served as a legislative aide for Larry Pressler, South Dakota’s other Senator. When they moved back to South Dakota, she worked on special projects for the governor’s office. The Thune family returned to DC when John was first elected to Congress, and Kimberley took up with the Republican Congressional Club and the National Prayer Breakfast. 5. He likes basketball and the Doobie Brothers In an alternate universe where Abdnor had kept his mouth shut at that high school basketball game back in the 1970s, perhaps Thune would have pivoted to a basketball coaching career. A competitive athlete in his high school days, Thune played college basketball at Biola, where he also earned a BA in business (he later got an MBA from the University of South Dakota). He stands 6-foot-4, according to a 2009 column written by David Brooks for the New York Times—a column that also emphasizes how good-looking Thune is, thank you David! Thune also appears to be a real classic rocker. In a 2005 interview with the RNC, he listed his favorite bands: “Doobie Brothers, Styx, Journey, Boston,” according to a Washington Post article from the same year. Listen to the music, John. The post 5 Things to Know About John Thune, the New Senate Majority Leader first appeared on Washingtonian.