Main Street Caucus grows behind-the-scenes influence in Trump’s GOP

The House GOP’s Main Street Caucus has turned into a critical behind-the-scenes force for striking deals in the fractious, slim majority — and is set to grow even more important as its leaders prioritize being in President Trump’s orbit as Republicans plot an ambitious legislative agenda.

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) is in his second term as the group’s chair, and Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) is the group’s new vice chair, replacing Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.), who remains deeply involved in the group’s leadership decisions.

In a joint interview with The Hill, the three Main Street leaders outlined their low-key, high-impact strategy.

“Something that I don't know that many people know is the amount of influence that the Main Street Caucus has behind the scenes,” Flood said. “Everyone's drawn to anger. People revel in anger, and the angrier you are, the louder you are, the more you're in the headlines.”

But Main Street takes a different approach.

“I just think our secret sauce is we don't view politics as a zero-sum game. We're not against anybody. We're just pro-getting our work done,” Johnson said. “And we're not interested in a lot of headlines or doing a lot of media. We just we want to work with 220 Republicans to deliver on the agenda.”

Finding near-unanimous consensus in the House GOP will be critical to not only avoiding the kind of chaos that defined the 118th Congress, headlined by the ouster of a Speaker, but to getting Trump’s priorities on tax cuts, border security, and energy reform across the finish line.

The three were among the many House Republicans who ventured down to Mar-a-Lago for a series of meetings with Trump earlier this month as Republicans brainstormed policies to include in the “big, beautiful bill” of Trump priorities.

Being present as Trump is making decisions is a priority for the group as he takes power. They also plan to regularly have Trump administration officials at Main Street meetings.

“It's important for Main Street members to be in the White House too. Trump takes over, he's going to hear from a lot of voices,” Flood said. “He likes lots of voices in the room. He likes competing voices in the room. And I know a good number of our Main Street members are very interested in being over there as much as possible, to make sure that we are as active as any other caucus, or as any other group of stakeholders.”

The dinner was not the only notable Trump-friendly action from the group this month. Johnson introduced a bill that would authorize the president to engage in negotiations to acquire the Panama Canal.

Main Street calls itself a group of “pragmatic conservatives,” with 70 members and counting spanning all corners of the country from deep-red districts to some of the most competitive swing seats. It is in favor of “implementing pro-growth policies for small business owners, fostering economic and individual prosperity, and delivering real results for the American people.”

The group is less about being ideologically-driven than it is about building consensus and pursuing strategies to pass meaningful legislation — all done mostly behind closed doors. It is rare that Main Street puts out a press release or makes a joint statement.

That approach stands in contrast to the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, that, while secretive in some ways, is known for its public, aggressive stances and for leveraging procedural tactics in an attempt to pressure GOP leadership or Democrats to succumb to more conservative policies.

But despite the differing tactics, the two groups have worked closely together, including on the 2023 debt limit deal and other spending measures.

“We do have the ability to work together and get down into the weeds and find areas [of] common ground and be able to move legislation,” Bice said. “And with a very, very small majority that we look to have next Congress, it's vital that these two entities who are sort of power players, if you will, within the Republican conference, have the ability to sit down and have these robust discussions and negotiations.”

One of the most consequential and surprising deals struck between the Main Street and Freedom caucuses in November paved the way for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to be unanimously renominated as Speaker.

A number of Main Street Caucus members had proposed anti-chaos changes to internal House GOP rules that would have punished members for rebelling against the majority of the party in ways that risked grinding legislative activity to a halt. One proposal, for instance, would remove members from committees if they supported a “motion to vacate” — a move to forcibly oust the Speaker.

The proposals infuriated members of the Freedom Caucus, many of whom had engaged in those kind of rebellious actions over the past two years.

In the end, the Speaker, Main Street leaders, and Freedom Caucus leaders negotiated a compromise: The Main Street Caucus members would drop their anti-chaos measures, and in exchange, the Freedom Caucus would not object to Johnson’s nomination and would support raising the threshold to trigger a “motion to vacate” snap vote on recalling the Speaker from one member to nine members.

“People told me, ‘You'll never get them to move off one. You'll never get them to move off one,’” Johnson said. “The reality is, you get people who trust one another in a room, you find some common ground, you can get a win.”

“I think it will alleviate one of the obstacles that was a potential pitfall over the last two years,” Bice said about the new, higher threshold. “I think the fact that it was acted upon once sort of gives people cover to do it again, which we wanted to avoid.”

With those House rules and its Speaker now in place, the focus now turns to the Trump legislative agenda, which Republicans will push through a party-line reconciliation process that bypasses the threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

The planning for the bill has already been plagued by GOP division over demands for substantial spending cuts, disagreements about a one- or two-bill strategy, and other matters.

Main Street, though, is ready for that.

“Here are three things I know for sure: Number 1, reconciliation can get done. Number 2, there are going to be snarls along the way. And number 3, Main Street is going to be involved in untying those snarls,” Johnson said.

Flood added: “We’re going to be players.”

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