WASHINGTON — Senators signaled Sunday that President-elect Donald Trump’s leading candidate for secretary of state, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, could have trouble winning confirmation because of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Being a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an attribute I am hoping for,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., posed on Twitter. Rubio is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, which will consider Trump’s eventual nominee for secretary of state.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks with members of the military, during Saturday's Army-Navy college football game in Baltimore Saturday, won by Army. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Criticism from Republicans such as Rubio and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and key Democrats, suggests that nominating Tillerson could become a messy distraction for Trump. It also would become a proxy fight over Trump’s position that Putin is an effective leader with whom he can reach agreements, a stance widely unpopular among lawmakers in both parties.

Relations between the U.S. and Russia have reached an ebb since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and intervention in Syria’s civil war, and Putin has expressed hope that Trump will be a more sympathetic ear in the White House than President Barack Obama, whose relationship with the Russian leader is frosty.

“I don’t know what Mr. Tillerson’s relationship with Vladimir Putin was, but I’ll tell you it is a matter of concern to me,” said McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “You want to give the president of the United States the benefit of the doubt because the people have spoken,” he said on Fox News Saturday. “But Vladimir Putin is a thug, a bully and a murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying.”

Tillerson’s ties to Putin date to 1999, when they met on Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East. He was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship, a high civilian honor given to distinguished foreign nationals. As recently as 2015 he visited with officials in Putin’s inner circle.

That connection could make him a useful bridge between the Russian leader and Trump in his efforts to improve U.S. relations with Moscow.

But Stephen Sestanovich, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union, said it would be impossible for Tillerson to be effective, given his connections to Exxon and Putin.

“This is a shocking choice: If Tillerson has to recuse himself from Russia policy, he can’t do his job; if he doesn’t recuse himself, he creates the appearance of deep conflict of interest, even corruption,” Sestanovich said in an email. “This is a god-awful position for a secretary of state to be in.”

Trump met with Tillerson, who must retire from Exxon when he turns 65 in March, for more than two hours on Saturday, and he is likely to offer the Exxon chief the secretary of state position, a person familiar with the matter said. Trump has also considered prominent politicians for the job, including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican.

In a sign that he’d try to provide a receptive confirmation hearing for Tillerson, Corker posted on Twitter Saturday: “If it is Rex Tillerson, he is a very impressive individual.”

But it would take only one Republican, such as Rubio, joining all of the Foreign Relations Committee’s Democrats to block a Tillerson nomination in the committee. The nomination could be taken to the Senate floor despite a rejection in the committee, but that would be unprecedented for a Cabinet post.

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