Scores of political leaders, including nearly two dozen members of Congress from across the ideological spectrum, gathered in Washington, D.C., on Thursday for No Labels’ national conference to emphasize the importance of bipartisan dealmaking and nonpartisan governance in the next legislative year. 

Legislators in attendance — eight senators and 15 House lawmakers — said they were optimistic about opportunities for bipartisan cooperation on legislative issues.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who will chair the high-profile Senate Appropriations Committee in the next Congress, discussed how refusing to act as a party-line vote opened her up to threats from those that expect members to fall in line with the party’s positions. 

“When you’re in the center and trying to work with both sides, the corollary of that is you get hit hard by the far-left and the far-right,” Collins said. “I just learned that Heritage Action is gonna start running ads to try and pressure me [to support Trump’s agenda], which never works so I don’t know why they bother, but they’re starting ads in Maine this weekend. It’s hard not to let that make you weary when you are working so hard and trying to do what you think is right for your state and for America.”

Speaking to Jewish Insider on the sidelines of the event, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who will be a key swing vote in the Senate and spoke at the gathering about her expectation that new centrist coalitions would form in this next Congress, said that it is “still early to identify where we might find common ground.” 

“I’m still meeting some of the newcomers that are coming in. We had a few core members that are going to be moving on both sides of the aisle, so how we look at these areas and say, ‘You know what, we need to be working together on this. Let’s make this happen,’ I think we’ve got some time before you’re going to see those gel out,” Murkowski said. 

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said during a panel featuring House lawmakers that he believed “energy, immigration and housing really are the three biggest issues facing the country and if we actually tackle them, our economy is going to boom.”

“Then we’ve got to deal with Middle East peace,” he quipped.

Lawler, who won his re-election race by one of the closest margins nationwide this cycle, told JI that he believed lawmakers would continue to come together on legislative efforts to support Israel and address domestic antisemitism, pointing to coalitions that formed in the last Congress. 

“Some of my closest friends and colleagues are [Democratic Reps.] Josh Gottheimer and Ritchie Torres and Jared Moskowitz, so I absolutely do believe these are areas where there’s going to be strong bipartisan support,” Lawler said.

Sens. Todd Young (R-IN) and Tim Kaine (D-VA), who have worked together over several administrations to repeal the 2002 Authorization of Military Force (which has allowed presidents to take military action without the approval of Congress), offered different perspectives on the situation in the Middle East. 

Young, who declined to endorse Trump or Harris in the election, delivered a speech criticizing President Joe Biden’s foreign policy doctrine as a failure. The Indiana senator argued that Biden’s decision to lift sanctions on Iran while trying “to revive the Obama-era nuclear deal” prompted the Oct. 7 attack. 

“The result was October 7, 2023, the worst attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Young said. 

Kaine, who has emerged as a leading critic of Israel’s military operations and continues to push for a cessation of hostilities, said that he was glad to see the Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire mostly holding and reiterated his goal for a similar drawdown in Gaza. 

“If we could get to a cease-fire with Israel in Gaza, that would really change the dynamic, because it will reduce pressures from the Houthis in the Red Sea and create a little moment of calm at a time when Iran, a growing bellicose adversary, has been greatly weakened by the decline of Hamas, the decline of Hezbollah and now the collapse of the Assad government. So an opportunity, but a lot of questions,” the Virginia senator said.

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, the centrist Republican who lost a high-profile contest in November to replace retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), condemned the political partisanship and urged political leaders to build bipartisan coalitions and act as unifiers.

“Most Americans are thoroughly convinced that we’re hopelessly divided, that Washington is completely dysfunctional and that our entire political system is fundamentally broken, but just down the road from here in Annapolis over the past 10 years, we have shown a better path forward,” Hogan said. “The lessons that we learn from those efforts are clear, that successful politics is about addition and multiplication. It’s not about subtraction and division, and both parties have been doing a lot more subtracting and dividing lately.”

“Durable solutions don’t come from ramming through policies on party-line votes. They come from honest negotiations, compromise and a shared sense of responsibility to serve the people,” he added. 

Hogan’s speech marked his first public appearance since his election loss.