WASHINGTON: US Senator Mitt Romney will not seek reelection in 2024, capping a roller-coaster ride through Republican politics from the height of his party’s 2012 presidential nomination to his feud with Donald Trump.
The 76-year-old Utah Republican said on Wednesday he would retire as a one-term senator when his term ends in early 2025, rather than seek another six years in Congress.
“At the end of another term I’d be in my mid-80s. Frankly it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” Romney said in a video statement. “While I’m not running for reelection, I’m not retiring from the fight.”
Romney stood out within his caucus as a rare critic of former President Trump, but his decision to retire effectively surrenders his Utah Senate seat to a successor who could be more closely aligned with Trump and the hardline conservative politics of the state’s other US senator Republican Mike Lee.
The son of a former Michigan governor, auto industry executive and 1968 Republican presidential candidate, Romney became a multimillionaire in the private equity business and served as Massachusetts’ governor before mounting an unsuccessful challenge against President Barack Obama as the Republican party presidential nominee in 2012.
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As a US senator since 2019, he has been an outspoken critic of Democratic President Joe Biden, but willing to work with the White House and Democrats on issues including infrastructure and gun control.
With Trump dominating the 2024 Republican presidential field, Romney has faced powerful headwinds at home in solidly Republican Utah. A poll in June showed 47% of Republicans saying that Trump best represented them, compared with 39% who favored Romney.
Romney was the only Republican senator to vote to convict Trump at both his Senate impeachment trials. Trump called the senator’s retirement “fantastic news for America” in a social media post.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement that he was sorry to see Romney go, applauding him for making “remarkably efficient use of his brief tenure in the Senate.”
Romney said his post-Senate life will focus on bringing young people into politics. “My party is only going to be successful getting young people to vote for us if we’re talking about the future,” he said.
Romney said he wished both Biden and Trump would step back from their presidential campaigns and let younger candidates run. “President Biden said when he was running that he was a transitional figure to the next generation. Well, time to transition,” he said.
Romney, a fifth-generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormon church, narrowly avoided censure by the Utah Republican Party over his opposition to Trump in 2021.
