Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney On Wednesday, he said he would not run for re-election in 2024, creating a wide-open race expected to draw a slew of candidates in a heavily Republican state.
Former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announced the news in a video statement. The 76-year-old said the country was ready for new leadership.
“Quite frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” he said. “They need to make decisions that shape the world they will live in.”
Romney noted that by the end of another six-year Senate term, he will be in his 80s. While he did not directly mention the ages of President Joe Biden, 80, or former President Donald Trump, 77, who are leading their respective parties’ 2024 presidential nominations, he blamed both men for their contribution to the growing national debt. Not enough reaction. Climate change and other long-term issues.
He is the sixth sitting senator to announce plans to retire when his term ends in 2025, joining Indiana Republican and Democrat Mike Braun. Tom Carper Delaware, Ben Cardin Maryland, diane feinstein California and Debbie Stabenow Michigan.
Romney easily won election in reliably Republican Utah in 2018, but he is expected to face more resistance from his own party after he became one of the most high-profile members to break with Trump. Trump remains the party’s de facto leader.
In 2020, Romney became the first elected senator in U.S. history vote to convict President Romney, from his own party in the impeachment trial, was the only Republican to vote against Trump in the first impeachment and one of seven Republicans to vote to convict Trump in the second. .
Trump was acquitted by the Senate both times.
Months after Romney voted in his second impeachment trial, he was booed by the most active members of the Utah Republican Party and took a measure condemn him A near miss. Members of the party have even thrown the term “Mitt Romney Republicans” at opponents in the 2022 midterm elections.
Still, Romney is seen as widely popular in Utah, a state that has long harbored a partisan group that espouses civic conservatism and resists Trump’s brash and norm-shattering style of politics.
The state is home to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project; anti-Trump Republican Evan McMullin has launched a long-shot 2016 presidential campaign; Republican Gov. Spencer Corker Spencer Cox has been critical of Trump and is also expected to be re-elected in 2024.
More than a majority of the state’s population are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The faith came to Western states with pioneers fleeing religious persecution and spread across the globe as the religion’s missionaries, a legacy that has led the church’s conservative members to embrace immigrants and refugees.
Romney, a graduate of Brigham Young University, was one of the faith’s most visible members following the 2012 presidential campaign and has been a popular figure in the state for two decades. He bolstered his reputation by turning a bribery scandal at the 2002 Utah Winter Olympics into a global showcase in Salt Lake City.
The wealthy former private equity executive served as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. In 2006, Romney signed a health care law in Massachusetts that had some of the same core features as the 2010 federal health care law signed by President Barack Obama. Defeated Romney in the 2012 White House election.
During his presidential campaign, Romney worked hard to shake off the perception that he was out of touch with ordinary Americans. That image played out in comments he secretly recorded at a fundraiser, in which he said he wasn’t worried about winning the votes of “the 47 percent of Americans” who “believe they are victims” and ” No income tax paid”.
After his failed bid for president, he moved to Utah.
In 2016, he broke with Trump for the first time, delivering a scathing speech in Utah, denouncing then-presidential candidate Trump as a “liar” and unfit to serve as president.
After Trump’s victory, Romney had dinner with Trump to discuss Romney becoming the president-elect’s secretary of state. Trump chose ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson.
Romney accepted Trump’s endorsement during the 2018 Senate primary race, but also pledged in an op-ed that year that “when the president makes comments that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or Undermining democratic institutions.”
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