Five Texas Republicans heading for the exits, now Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, who's been in the House since I learned to walk, is leaving Congress.
Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, the second longest-serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives, will not run for a 22nd term, he said Wednesday.
Sensenbrenner made his first public announcement Wednesday on The Mark Belling Show on WISN-AM (1130).
In a separate interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he said, “I think the time has come to basically turn over the page in the 5th District.”
The 76-year-old congressman has long represented the GOP’s geographic base in Wisconsin — the suburban, exurban and rural communities north and west of Milwaukee County that historically turn out in droves for Republican candidates and provide a large share of the party’s activists and political leaders.
Sensenbrenner’s departure after 2020 is likely to draw huge interest from within a district packed with aspiring GOP politicians.
It also makes him the latest of several big-name Republicans to leave the Wisconsin stage: former House Speaker Paul Ryan (who retired after 2018), former Gov. Scott Walker (who was defeated in 2018) and current congressman Sean Duffy, who announced he would step down this month to focus on the health problems of the baby he and his wife are expecting.
Sensenbrenner said he is not retiring for health reasons or because he is worried about a re-election challenge. He is at least the 15th GOP member of the U.S. House to announce retirement this year, a group that includes Duffy.
Sensenbrenner said his decision was also unrelated to serving in the minority, where he has spent virtually half his congressional career, and unrelated to the turbulence of Donald Trump’s presidency.
He plans to serve out his current term and said he will back “the Republican ticket from top to bottom” in 2020.
“I’ve said all along I’d know when the right time came and I’ve come to the conclusion it has,” he said. “There is nobody running against me. Nobody can say they’ve pushed me out. I am doing this on my terms.”
Said Sensenbrenner:
“You can see the end of the line sometime. Being able to do this on my timetable rather than after a redistricting in 2022 will allow me to go out on a high note … This is just me feeling the time would be coming in the next few years, and I think this is the best time for me personally, and for both the Republican Party and for me politically.”
Maybe he is actually leaving on his own terms...but he's still leaving. The most powerful Republican in Wisconsin is calling it quits in a year where more than a dozen other GOP incumbents are throwing in the towel, and I expect a lot more Republicans to join him.
Deep down, they all know the damage Trump has done to the GOP for any Republican not named Trump is lethal.
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