Senate Republicans have long felt as though their House GOP counterparts speak a different language. Now, with the party agenda on the line, they’re leaning on the translator in their midst.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) joined the Senate just two years ago after a decade in the House, but the 47-year-old former plumbing company owner and retired mixed martial arts fighter has already gotten comfortable in the trusted, if unofficial, role of House whisperer, as his Senate colleagues frequently call him.
The Bridge Builder
“He plays a very constructive role,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview. “He’s just a guy who is always looking and driving to try to get things done.”
It’s a role Republicans need now more than ever as they struggle to get on the same page on key issues roughly a month into their trifecta. The two chambers are at loggerheads over their competing plans for President Donald Trump’s policy agenda, with major fights over government funding and raising the debt ceiling also looming.
Mullin moved quickly after Trump’s election to start getting House and Senate GOP leaders talking to each other, if not necessarily agreeing. As the strategic dispute over enacting the GOP agenda spilled into the open last year, Mullin arranged a meeting between two key players: Thune and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, a longtime friend and D.C. housemate of Mullin’s.
“There was a difference between the two and they needed to work it out and they are both friends of mine. So I was like, ‘Hey, let’s get everybody in a room,’” Mullin said in an interview.
Facilitating Communication
While the closed-door powwow didn’t yield an immediate breakthrough, it created an informal back channel that quietly continues to this day. Thune credited Mullin, who participated in the meeting, with opening useful “lines of communication.”
Disagreements between the House and Senate, of course, are a tale as old as Congress itself. But few lawmakers in its history have been quite as aggressive in establishing and maintaining cross-Rotunda relations as Mullin, who served five terms in the House before his 2022 election to the Senate.
He is a frequent attendee of the House GOP’s weekly conference meetings and the Wednesday lunches of the Republican Study Committee — it’s otherwise rare for any senator to show up — and he is seen at key points shuttling in and out of Speaker Mike Johnson’s office. As House Republicans grappled Tuesday over the path forward on their own budget resolution, Mullin stopped by their conference meeting, telling reporters that he was just “listening.”
Mullin’s unofficial position reflects a reputation dating back to his House days for having both a freewheeling style and a penchant for throwing himself into the middle of thorny situations. At times, getting in on the action as a problem-solver has come at personal risk — trying to talk down rioters inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, for instance, or seeking to enter Afghanistan amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. More recently it has been lower-stakes, such as transforming himself on social media to be a frequent explainer of Senate procedure and advocate for Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
Building Trust and Understanding
Right now, much of his energy is funneled into smoothing over the sometimes strained relationship between the two sides of the Capitol, including attending House GOP Conference meetings twice a month to hear out what they are thinking, swapping intel with Johnson and talking to Smith “constantly,” according to Mullin.
“I think it’s helpful to have kind of a liaison between both chambers because there’s a lot of confusion that takes place,” Mullin said. “You would think that with us being in the same building we would know what each chamber is doing, but really we don’t.”
Mullin added that while he’s rarely asked a question during the House GOP conference meetings, lawmakers afterward “come up and ask me a lot of questions” about the Senate “what’s going on, what’s the expectations, what do you need from us.”
Valuable Connections
Another former House guy, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), recalled that when he was in the other chamber, “I never really wanted to see senators.” Now he considers Mullin a “valuable source” of House intelligence.
He also enjoys one of the closest relationships to Trump among Republican senators — making him, in Thune’s words, a “Senate whisperer” for Trump just as he interprets House doings for his colleagues. Notably, Mullin emerged as a key emissary for Thune during last year’s GOP leadership race, encouraging Trump to stay out of the three-way race to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell as party leader.
Future Collaboration
Trump gave Mullin a shout-out during a closed-door dinner earlier this month with Senate Republicans, referencing his well-known contretemps with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. (The two exchanged sharp words at a Senate hearing, with Mullin threatening to fight the union boss. They later made up after reconnecting at Trump’s behest.)
Now in his third year as a senator, he is one of four advisers to the elected GOP leadership, giving him a seat in their weekly meetings. He also serves on the whip team, as he did in the House. (He’s also taken over the Senate’s famed candy desk, though that has been surprisingly contentious: He irked some of his colleagues by stocking it with St. Patrick’s Day green sweets for last week’s vote-a-rama.
Mullin also provides more informal guidance to his colleagues, said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), using his House contacts to “let us know what they’re thinking and what might be a good way to work together with them and get stuff accomplished.”
“I think it’s very helpful,” Hoeven added. “He’s just kind of taken on that unofficial role to become a liaison.”
Mullin was an early interpreter inside the Senate GOP when Johnson and Smith broke with Thune to advocate for passing Trump’s domestic policy agenda in one massive bill rather than two. He explained the pressures House leaders are facing given the tight GOP majority and that it made more sense for them to whip a single high-stakes vote.
But Mullin has since backed Thune’s decision to move ahead with his two-bill plan. He acknowledged the House has missed its own self-imposed deadlines, while downplaying the drama between the two chambers.
Republicans aren’t expecting Mullin to pull off a miracle with the two chambers still locked on different tracks. But some GOP senators know they need to smooth things over quickly, and they view Mullin as their unofficial liaison to the House — a title some Senate GOP staffers now jokingly use for him.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) pointed to Mullin as someone who has “very strong and deep relationships,” including the ability to have “challenging conversations” with the House while helping Senate Republicans “understand what is going on over there.”
