Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has announced that he won’t seek a second term in the Senate.
The 2012 Republican presidential nominee made his announcement on Sept. 13, citing a desire to allow a new generation to “step up” and “shape the world they’re going to live in.”
The Utah Republican, 76, pointed out that a second term would take him into his 80s and would likely be less productive and less gratifying than the current term.
He also attributed his decision to his personal mistrust of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump’s leadership as well as the chaos he sees among House Republicans.
In 2020, Mr. Romney made history when he voted to impeach and convict a president from his own party. He was one of just seven Republicans to vote to convict President Trump in the second round of impeachment, and he was the only Republican to vote against him in the first round. In both instances, the Senate voted against convicting the former president.
Months after his vote in the second impeachment trial, Mr. Romney was booed by a gathering of the most active members of the Utah Republican Party, and a move to punish him narrowly failed. On the campaign trail for the midterm elections of 2022, members of the party hurled the label “Mitt Romney Republican” at their rivals.
Mr. Romney, who was elected to the Senate in 2018 with 63 percent of the vote, said he'll finish his term, which ends in January 2025.
“While I’m not running for reelection, I’m not retiring from the fight,” he said. “I‘ll be your United States senator until January of 2025. I will keep working on these and other issues, and I’ll advance our state’s numerous priorities. I look forward to working with you and with folks across our state and nation in that endeavor.”
President Trump, a vocal critic of the senator, weighed in on the news in a Truth Social post, writing in all-caps, “Fantastic news for America, the great state of Utah, [and] for the Republican Party.”
He referenced Mr. Romney as “Pierre Delecto,” an alias that the senator formerly used on X, saying the senator would have been up for a tough primary, “but now that will not be necessary.”
Mr. Romney spoke to reporters several hours after his announcement, telling The Epoch Times’s sister media NTD that along with his concerns about age, he wants younger generations to make the decisions that will impact them in the long run.
“[Baby] boomers have done very well for ourselves,” Mr. Romney told reporters. “We voted for all sorts of benefits and programs for us, and we haven’t paid for them. And I think some of the people that are coming along next want to have a say in how we leave the earth and how they prepare for the future they’re going to live in.”
Several reporters asked the outgoing senator whether his resignation was meant to hint to other aging politicians that they should step aside, but Mr. Romney noted that in addition to his age, he was unable to take on many leadership roles because this was his first term in the upper chamber.
He also commented positively on some of his fellow lawmakers and their work: “If I knew that I was going to be like Chuck Grassley and be able to be vigorous and dynamic into my 90s ... I might have reached a different decision.”
Mr. Romney was questioned several times about his conflict with President Trump. The lawmaker was clear that he believes the former president’s leadership over the Republican Party is damaging and temporary, talking about his “wing” of the party as if it were separate from the Republicans who support President Trump.
“There’s no question, but the Republican Party today is in the shadow of Donald Trump … I represent a small wing of the party, if you will, I call it the wise wing of the Republican Party, and I don’t believe we’re going away.
“The Trump wing of the party talks about resentments of various kinds and getting even and settling scores and revisiting the 2020 election. What are the policies for the future? My party is only going to be successful [in] getting young people to vote for us if we’re talking about the future. And that’s not happening so far.”
When asked by The Epoch Times who he endorsed to replace him, the senator said he didn’t intend to make an endorsement: “I think endorsements are ... not worth a bucket of spit.”
When asked what the biggest regret in his career was, the lawmaker said shortly, “I don’t have any.”
