By Kathleen Hunter, CQ Staff

Senate Republican Conference leaders have received notice that Sen. Jim DeMint plans to call for a vote next week on ejecting convicted Sen. Ted Stevens from the caucus.

To be ejected from the GOP Conference is not the same as being expelled from the Senate. Stevens, R-Alaska, would remain a senator and retain his floor voting rights, but he would not be able to participate in Republicans-only decisions, such as picking party leaders, and he would lose his committee assignments.

A GOP leadership aide said DeMint, R-S.C., notified Senate GOP leaders Monday that he plans to make a motion to remove Stevens from the Senate Republican Conference during a Nov. 18 closed-door meeting.

During that meeting, Senate Republicans are scheduled to elect their party leaders for the 111th Congress.

“The GOP leadership should be the first to act on this by expelling Stevens from the Republican conference and not assigning him any committee seats,” said DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton. “We should clean our own house.”

It was not immediately clear whether DeMint’s effort would garner support from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky. — who has called on Stevens to resign — or other GOP leaders.

DeMint’s effort will fizzle unless he lines up another senator to second his ejection motion.

If the effort succeeds, Stevens, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, would be stripped of his seats on the Appropriations and Commerce committees, both of which he once led.

Stevens also would lose his other three committee assignments: Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Rules and Administration; and Joint Library and would no longer be allowed to vote in weekly conference meetings.

“This is going to be pretty important moment for McConnell in terms of how to demonstrate leadership,” the GOP leadership aide said.

Those committee posts would not be officially reassigned until January after Democrats and Republicans negotiate a committee structure that almost certainly will include less seats for Republicans, who lost ground in the recent election.

DeMint’s move came on the same day he previewed changes to GOP conference rules that he intends to propose next week. His proposals, which strike at the heart of the Senate’s seniority-based system, have fueled questions about whether internal decisions that begin next week might be postponed until January. By then, the outcome of three undecided races involving Republican incumbents — Stevens, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia — are expected to be resolved.

McConnell, Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona and GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee are not expected to face challenges next week, but lower rungs of the leadership ladder likely will be contested.