WASHINGTON — The Senate began on Tuesday to consider the nomination of Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, to be the director of national intelligence, at its first hearing since the coronavirus pandemic sent its members home a month ago.

President Trump first proposed installing Mr. Ratcliffe, a loyal supporter, in the job last summer, only to abruptly rescind the plan after lawmakers questioned Mr. Ratcliffe’s lack of experience and partisan record in the House, and news media reports highlighted several instances in which Mr. Ratcliffe appeared to inflate or distort aspects of his résumé.

This time around, Mr. Ratcliffe received a warmer reception, at least from Republican lawmakers who control the Senate. Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the intelligence committee chairman, said he planned to hold a panel vote on the nomination as soon as he could, suggesting he had confidence in Mr. Ratcliffe. Senators want a permanent director to oversee the 17 agencies that compose the intelligence community as they wrestle with how to make sense of the origins and impact of Covid-19.

Mr. Ratcliffe pledged to be objective, a chief concern among lawmakers who prize keeping politics out of intelligence gathering.

“You have my commitment to deliver timely, accurate and objective intelligence, and to speak truth to power, be that with Congress or within the administration,” Mr. Ratcliffe said in his opening statement. “Let me be very clear. Regardless of what anyone wants our intelligence to reflect, the intelligence I will provide, if confirmed, will not be impacted or altered as a result of outside influence.”

The hearing was unusual, with a measure of social distancing enforced. In a mostly empty room, Mr. Ratcliffe sat on nearly the opposite end from the senators, much farther back than hearing witnesses typically sit. Of those present, many wore masks, including Mr. Burr and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s top Democrat. Both removed their masks from their faces as they spoke at the start of the hearing, and Mr. Ratcliffe did not wear one.

Though few lawmakers normally choose to sit through the entirety of a confirmation hearing, new rules ensured the senators’ chairs in the hearing room did not fill. Senators were given time slots, and no more than six lawmakers were supposed to be in the room at once, a dynamic that could affect the rhythm of the questioning.

If confirmed, Mr. Ratcliffe would replace the acting intelligence director, Richard Grenell, an aggressive Trump defender who has moved to remake the office during his interim assignment while he also continues to serve as ambassador to Germany. He has prompted unease among key Senate Republicans, including Mr. Burr, according to officials involved in the confirmation process.

But Mr. Warner said that however uncomfortable lawmakers are with Mr. Grenell’s leadership, he needed better reasons to confirm Mr. Ratcliffe. “Some have suggested that your main qualification for confirmation to this post is that you are not Ambassador Grenell,” Mr. Warner said in his opening remarks. “But frankly, that is not enough.”

Mr. Warner is among the influential Democrats who have signaled that they see Mr. Ratcliffe as summarily unprepared for a position that has been filled by military veterans and seasoned national security officials. Mr. Ratcliffe spent part of four years as a federal prosecutor in Texas under President George W. Bush and has served in the House since 2015, including one term on its Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Ratcliffe is a relentless defender of the president, but allies say he is hoping to emphasize areas of bipartisan concern. He told senators that he will have two top priorities for the intelligence community if confirmed, the geopolitical impact of the coronavirus pandemic and election security.

“The immediate focus of the I.C. must be directed toward the geopolitical and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as its origins,” he said in his opening remarks. “The American people deserve answers, and, if confirmed, I pledge that the I.C. will remain laser-focused on providing them.”

While lawmakers may try to question him about the Trump administration’s recent claims about intelligence about the virus’s origin, Mr. Ratcliffe will probably try to avoid that discussion, arguing that he is not privy yet to all of the classified material.

Lawmakers pressed Mr. Ratcliffe to allow election security officials stay in their jobs and continue to brief Congress. A report about one such update to the House Intelligence Committee by the administration’s election security czar helped prompt Mr. Trump to replace Joseph Maguire as the acting intelligence chief and eventually nominate Mr. Ratcliffe. Lawmakers have said they are worried the controversy over that briefing will cause the intelligence agencies to limit what they tell Congress.

Mr. Ratcliffe also tried to avoid being pinned down on his views of Russia’s 2016 election interference campaign.

“They have a goal of sowing discord and they have been successful of sowing discord,” Mr. Ratcliffe said of Russian government officials, but he insisted that their 2016 interference had not altered the outcome of the presidential election. Though his assertion dovetails with Mr. Trump’s insistence that he won the election on his own, it is impossible to say whether Russia’s campaign of sabotage changed any votes.

When Mr. Warner pressed Mr. Ratcliffe for his views of the 2017 assessment by the intelligence agencies that concluded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia developed a preference for Mr. Trump, the nominee demurred, saying he had not seen the underlying intelligence and could not make a determination on his own. Mr. Trump has consistently questioned the finding, but the intelligence committee unanimously endorsed it in a report last month.

John Sipher, a former C.I.A. officer, took issue with Mr. Ratcliffe’s assertion that Russian interference campaign changed no votes. “This is false,” Mr. Sipher wrote on Twitter. “The IC made clear that it does not look into or opine on this issue.”

Mr. Ratcliffe does plan to take a position on the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some Republicans are deeply critical of how the law was used to monitor Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, for potential ties to Russia in 2016.

As one of the most vocal critics of the investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016, Mr. Ratcliffe has been hard on the F.B.I. and its use of FISA-court-approved wiretaps. He has said that Mr. Page was surveilled illegally because the F.B.I. lacked probable cause, an argument he says a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general backs up.

Mr. Ratcliffe, according to people familiar with his thinking, supports the surveillance program but wants to ensure that the law works as intended and is not abused.

An overhaul of the law has been approved by the House, but still needs the backing of 60 senators as well as Mr. Trump, who has been critical of government surveillance programs.

As the House was debating and voting on a renewed FISA law, Mr. Ratcliffe abstained from voting once he was nominated to be the intelligence chief. But supporters of the overhaul may see Mr. Ratcliffe as a potential ally in encouraging Mr. Trump to support the new legislation.