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Republican Mitt Romney, stalwart of the party’s Reaganite wing and defiant critic of Donald Trump, will not seek re-election to the US Senate next year, saying it is time for a “new generation of leaders” to “shape the world they will be living in”.
Romney, who is 76 and ran as the Republican candidate for president in 2012, announced the decision to end his political career in a pre-recorded video statement on Wednesday that cited his age.
He said: “At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-eighties. Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders.”
Romney’s departure will remove one of the remaining bulwarks against the Republican party’s shift away from its modern conservative roots and towards Trumpian populism. The announcement comes five years after the death of Senator John McCain, Romney’s predecessor as Republican presidential nominee and one of the few other powerful Washington opponents of the party’s embrace of Trump.
The Utah senator’s decision will also raise uncomfortable questions about Washington’s ageing elite, including President Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the senate. Romney also cited the 77-year-old Trump in his announcement.
“Neither President Biden nor former president Trump are leading their party to confront [the most important] issues.”
Biden, now 80-years old, has faced persistent questions about his age as he gears up for a re-election bid, while McConnell, 81, has confronted calls to step aside after twice in recent months appearing to freeze while speaking to reporters.
Romney’s planned departure from the Senate will also be a blow to moderate Republicans seeking to distance the party from Trump, especially following the January 6 2021 attack on the capitol and the former president’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.
Romney is the only Republican senator who voted to convict the former president in both of Trump’s impeachment trials.
Romney is also seen on Capitol Hill as a bipartisan dealmaker and instrumental in interparty negotiations on legislation. He voted with Democrats on several occasions, including to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, the US’s first African-American woman to sit on the Supreme Court.
A former chief executive of management consultancy Bain & Company, Romney co-founded and led its private equity spin-off Bain Capital. He took a leave of absence from the firm to lead the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, a move that catapulted him into politics.
Romney became governor of Massachusetts in 2002, and launched an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. He lost that contest to McCain, but secured the party’s backing for the 2012 presidential election, which he lost to Barack Obama.
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