Tech has become one of the major issues of political debate heading into 2020. On the left, Elizabeth Warren has promised to break up big tech companies like Google and Amazon, and in recent weeks, she has publicly clashed with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over his company’s size and its controversial political ads policies. On the right, President Donald Trump appears determined to make allegations of social media bias one of the tenets of his reelection bid.

But there is another, lesser-known political figure zeroing in on tech, and he was there before a lot of others: Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. Hawley is looking to make a name for himself on Capitol Hill. And he’s going through Facebook and Google to do it.

And there’s something that sets him apart from his party’s leader: He has more nuance. While some of his points are as polarizing as Trump’s, Hawley has managed to work successfully with Democrats on tech legislation. At a time when Big Tech is becoming an increasingly salient and urgent part of the political and cultural conversation, Hawley’s stance on tech could portend the future of the Republican Party’s approach to Silicon Valley.

The youngest member of the United States Senate at age 39, Hawley was elected in November 2018. He’s had a busy year: The ambitious former Missouri attorney general has introduced and cosponsored multiple pieces of legislation on issues such as data tracking, children’s online privacy, data monetization, alleged social media bias, and tech addiction. He’s also taken a notably aggressive tack when questioning tech executives in congressional hearings. His scrutiny of Silicon Valley comes at a time when reining in Big Tech is becoming increasingly popular politically — meaning that talking about it is a way to get attention in the press.

“Google, YouTube, Facebook — they will do nothing until they are forced to actually behave in a responsible way,” Hawley told Recode in an interview this summer. “In the meantime, they misdirect, they obfuscate, and they sometimes outright lie.”

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Hawley’s criticisms of Big Tech have sometimes drawn support from his Democratic colleagues, but not all of his efforts are bipartisan. For example, almost everyone has dismissed his proposed bill to combat political bias on social media platforms, which was seemingly inspired by conservatives’ unfounded claims that Facebook, Google, and Twitter censor conservative speech. Democrats, members of Hawley’s own Republican Party, and even the Republican fundraisers who helped support his Senate campaign have all panned the legislation.

But Hawley brushes aside suggestions that moderating his approach to the tech industry might be more effective. He’s got no regrets about calling social media a “parasite” or accusing tech companies of conducting an “assault on free speech” or arguing that tech companies’ claims of innovation are meaningless. His thinking on the tech sector feels almost punitive: He doesn’t just want to rein in Big Tech. He might prefer a world where it doesn’t exist at all.

“They need to do a lot better,” Hawley told Recode, ticking off his grievances on issues such as privacy, content moderation, and ad targeting. “They need to actually respect the rights and the safety of the people who they’re supposedly helping: their customers and consumers.”

Hawley reflects a post-Trump populism within the Republican Party that seems likely to outlast the 45th president. He has positioned himself as a defender of the middle of the country against the supposed “elite” class — a group that once encompassed big banks, academics, and the media, and that now includes Big Tech. In his first speech on the Senate floor, he described the cohort as “the aristocrats of our age.” (Never mind that Hawley attended Stanford and Yale and has picked up millions of dollars in donations from powerful GOP donors.)