Democrats like Markwayne Mullin but that doesn’t mean they’ll vote for him for DHS secretary

By Lauren Fox, Sarah Ferris, Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

(CNN) — In his early days in Congress, Markwayne Mullin tried pairing his suit jacket and tie with a pair of jeans on the House floor. Then-House Speaker John Boehner reprimanded the young Republican for breaking the dress code.

He might have come to Washington dressing as an outlier, but the 48-year-old – who still wears his cowboy hat on occasion to preside over the Senate floor – has learned a lot since.

Since coming to Washington in 2013, Mullin has built a brand on Capitol Hill as a straight-talking, former MMA fighter who is the rare partisan warrior who can tout White House talking points on Fox News and then sit down to cut the occasional deals with Democrats. The affable Oklahoman has spent decades building strong connections across both chambers in the US Capitol – which eventually helped catapult him into the president’s inner circle.

Now, Mullin is nominated to serve as President Donald Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, a post that will require him to execute the president’s signature campaign promise on immigration, which has turned into one of the party’s biggest political liabilities heading into the midterms. He is also about to test just how much he can keep his outsider bona fides while doing Trump’s bidding.

Mullin will sit before the Senate Homeland Security Committee Wednesday, just two weeks after he was suddenly tapped for the post and more than a month into a partisan government shutdown of the very agency that – if confirmed – he would run.

Now on the other side of the dais, Mullin is expected to face a grilling from Senate Democrats – some of whom have years-long friendships with him but are under intense pressure to oppose him amid the fractious immigration politics of this moment.

“There is a long tradition that senators nominated for Cabinet positions get confirmed. This is a highly charged post in an administration that has violated law, tradition, ethics and the Constitution in how they’ve carried out immigration enforcement,” Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware told CNN. “Markwayne, although well-liked, will face a higher bar because of the job and the president, not because of Markwayne.”

Mullin has, in some ways, come to embody Trump’s populist message. He dropped out of college to take over his family’s plumbing business when his dad got sick, later earning his associates degree.

But he’s also proven a shrewd politician. Mullin aligned himself not only with Trump but other key leaders, forging a friendship with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and then advocating doggedly for South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune in his bid for Senate majority leader.

Despite his sometimes-bombastic style, many Democrats argue it’s hard not to get along with Mullin, who now administers the Senate’s famed candy desk where members of both parties can stop by for a sweet treat (Mullin, a fitness enthusiast, is frequently seen hauling giant bags of candy to the chamber floor).

Already, several Democrats have signaled they won’t vote for him. They argue changing leadership at DHS – a department with more than 260,000 employees – will do little to reshape the direction of the agency, especially as many perceive top White House aide Stephen Miller and border czar Tom Homan as driving much of the administration’s enforcement actions across the country.

“Mullin is not the problem,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona said. “The problem is I am not sure Mullin is going to be in charge.”

Mullin never served on a committee with broad jurisdiction on immigration policy, but the Trump confidant and regular television surrogate has repeatedly echoed the administration’s talking points, saying on Fox News in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis that the ICU nurse had been a “deranged individual” who “came in to cause max damage with a loaded pistol.”

Other Democrats are looking for Mullin to break with Trump in a way that would give them a reason to vote for him, something that is inherently unlikely for a lawmaker who has built his brand in the US Capitol as being in lockstep with the president.

Mullin, for example, was among a small group of House members on the floor on January 6, 2021, who blocked the chamber door as pro-Trump rioters entered the building. That night – as many derided Trump’s attempts at challenging the election as having gone too far – Mullin voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election that Joe Biden had won the presidency.

Mullin, colleagues say, is in closer touch with the president than almost any other rank-and-file member. Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota who was taken under Mullin’s wing when he was first elected to the House, can personally recall a few dinners where Mullin has left the table to take a call from Trump.

It’s the lawmaker’s self-deprecating humor, practicality and natural instincts as a communicator that have served him well in Trump’s Washington, Johnson said.

“If you are looking for the smooth politician who always says the safe thing, Markwayne is not your guy,” Johnson said. “He is entirely and wholly authentic. He doesn’t put on a lot of airs. He is not hiding behind some screen of what he thinks you want him to be. You can take or leave Markwayne Mullin as he is.”

The fighter

New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer had just gotten to Congress in 2017 when his buddy, then-Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy, invited him to join a workout group in the House gym.

He met the mixed-martial arts fighter and former wrestler who was running the group and, as Gottheimer remembers it, “kicking my a**.”

A few days later, Gottheimer was on the House floor when he noticed Mullin a few feet away, wearing a suit and tie. He turned to Kennedy, and it was only then that he realized the hardcore workout leader was a member of Congress.

That famously intense group – with a warmup alone that includes 120 pushups, 30 pull ups and 50 burpees – has continued for more than a decade.

In the halls of Congress, Mullin, colleagues say, is regularly in motion and can be seen bouncing a rubber ball as he goes from one meeting to another.

But it’s that same propensity for action that has sometimes landed Mullin in trouble.

During the State of the Union address last month, it was Mullin who tried deliberately to rip a protest sign from Democratic Rep. Al Green’s hands.

And in a 2023 Senate hearing, Mullin challenged the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to a physical showdown, telling him to “stand your butt up,” before Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders interjected: “You are a United States senator.”

During the waning days of the conflict in Afghanistan in 2021, Mullin twice tried to get into the country in an effort to extract Americans there, a move that both Republican and Democratic leaders were against at the time.

Mullin’s instinct to take things into his own hands, colleagues say, can be abrupt and unusual on Capitol Hill, but may be useful at DHS.

“Markwayne just has a look you in the eye, commit and deliver sort of reputation around here and that is exactly what we need there,” North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said. “I mean do you really believe if you know Markwayne, you’ve seen him walk around here, he’s really going to get bullied by any staff to move into positions he doesn’t want to? Absolutely not.”

Like the president, Mullin isn’t a big details guy or policy wonk, his colleagues say, but he does understand the politics of the moment and has become an unofficial liaison of sorts between the two chambers on Capitol Hill.

Last summer, he was instrumental in helping bridge a divide between the Senate GOP, the White House and blue-state Republicans in the House who wanted to raise the state and local tax deduction as part of the president’s signature domestic policy package. (It didn’t hurt that Mullin’s DC roommate is the House tax-writing chair, Missouri Rep. Jason Smith.)

More than one member CNN interviewed for this story remarked they had personally been invited to Mullin’s home for a meeting or a dinner.

“He’s a real dealmaker. He’s somebody who likes to get sh*t done,” Gottheimer said of his colleague who he worked closely with during the Biden administration to pass aid for Ukraine.

Even when faced with controversy, Mullin, whose financial disclosures show he is a multimillionaire, has leaned on his outsider credentials.

When the House Ethics Committee instructed Mullin in 2018 to pay back $40,000 to a family business, he argued it “only proves that you can no longer be a citizen legislator, you have to be a career politician to serve in Washington D.C.”

Ready for a reset at DHS

As the White House prepares Mullin for his hearing, multiple Homeland Security officials have described a shared feeling of cautious optimism with the selection after a tumultuous year under the direction of Secretary Kristi Noem.

While many officials are still getting acquainted with the senator, his positions and his management style, he’s perceived – in part due to his reputation in Congress – as a steadying hand, sources told CNN.

And Trump administration officials expect Noem’s departure will also usher in a new, more synchronized era between DHS and Homan, who rarely spoke with the current secretary.

“It’s an interesting choice, but DHS was in a bit of a rut, so it was probably a necessary change. It seems that he’s approaching it with an open mind, so we’re hopeful that he’ll be open to some new ideas and approaches,” said Chris Chmielenski, president of the Immigration Accountability Project, which advocates for limited immigration.

But despite change at the top, the policies at the core of Trump’s immigration agenda shepherded by Miller are expected to remain the same.

Mullin, after all, has long been a staunch supporter of Trump’s immigration crackdown, an issue expected to become central to Democrats’ calculation on whether to back his nomination.

Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California whose office is near Mullin’s, told CNN he already planned a meeting with Mullin to discuss what policy changes he might be open to making. But Padilla, who was forcefully removed from a Noem event in Los Angeles last year, had a sober take on how much Mullin would change the fabric of DHS.

“It’s not lost on me how close he is to Trump,” he said.

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