Orrin Hatch of Utah, the longest-serving U.S. Senate Republican, announced Tuesday that he will retire at the end of the year, rebuffing the pleas of President Donald Trump to seek an eighth term and paving the way for Mitt Romney, a critic of Trump's, to run for the seat.
Hatch made his decision public Tuesday afternoon via a video announcement.
"When the president visited Utah last month, he said I was a fighter. I've always been a fighter. I was an amateur boxer in my youth, and I've brought that fighting spirit with me to Washington," he said. "But every good fighter knows when to hang up the gloves. And for me, that time is soon approaching."
Hatch, 83, was under heavy pressure from Trump to seek re-election and block Romney, who has been harshly critical of the president. But Hatch, who emerged as one of the president's most avid loyalists in the Senate, said he decided to retire after discussing the matter with his family over the holidays.
The veteran senator has amassed a distinguished record over his four decades in Washington and has become a fixture in a Senate once noted for its bipartisanship and now deeply polarized. Once considered an institution in his home state, Hatch was facing harsh poll numbers in Utah, where 75 percent of voters indicated in a survey last fall that they did not want him to run again.
Hatch's decision comes just weeks after Trump signed a tax overhaul into law, a measure that the senator helped write as chairman of the Finance Committee. The bill represented something of a capstone to Hatch's career, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, even deemed it as such last month in what was seen as a subtle effort to usher his colleague to the exits.
Hatch's decision clears the way for the political resurrection of Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee who is now a Utah resident and is popular in the Mormon-heavy state. Romney has told associates that he would likely run if Hatch retires.
"It would be difficult to defeat Mitt Romney if he were running here," said David Hansen, a longtime Utah Republican strategist and chairman of Hatch's political organization.
In a statement he posted on Facebook, Romney made no mention of his intentions, only saluting Hatch. But Bloomberg News reported that Romney's location, according to his Twitter profile, was changed from "Massachusetts" to "Holladay, UT" on Tuesday.
Last month, Trump flew with Hatch on Air Force One to Utah for a day of events aimed entirely at lobbying the senator to run again.
Trump then announced that he was vastly shrinking two of Utah's sprawling national monuments, reversing decisions made by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at the request of the senator. And the president used a speech in Salt Lake City to say he hoped Hatch would "continue to serve your state and your country in the Senate for a very long time to come."
As the president prodded Hatch to stay, voices in his home state were urging him to leave. On Christmas Day, The Salt Lake Tribune named the senator "Utahn of the Year," but not for flattering reasons.
"It would be good for Utah if Hatch, having finally caught the Great White Whale of tax reform, were to call it a career. If he doesn't, the voters should end it for him," the editorial concluded.
In announcing his retirement, Hatch joined an exodus of Republican heavyweights heading for the exits in what promises to be a difficult election season. Also Tuesday, Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, told the Washington Examiner that he planned to retire at the year's end.
Shuster, 56, was facing a possible primary challenge from the right and said his decision would allow him to focus exclusively on trying to steer major infrastructure legislation, a long-sought bipartisan priority, into law. The administration expects to release a detailed set of infrastructure principles in the next few weeks.
Shuster's top legislative priority has been removing air traffic control operations from the government and placing them under the authority of a private, nonprofit corporation. He has succeeded in winning transportation committee approval for the plan, but that's as far as the proposal has gone.
Shuster helped persuade Trump to back the plan, which is also a top lobbying priority of the airline industry. But the bill faces fierce opposition from other segments of the aviation industry, including private pilots and business aircraft operators, and is almost universally opposed by Democrats. Short the votes necessary for passage, GOP leaders have been unwilling to take the measure to the House floor for a vote.
"As we look to the legislative agenda this year and work with President Trump to upgrade our nation's infrastructure and improve the lives of the American people, I know that Bill will continue to be an important leader," said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
Other retiring House chairmen include Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., of the Judiciary Committee; Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, of the Financial Services Committee; and Lamar Smith, R-Texas, of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
In all, 33 House Republicans have announced that they will retire or run for another office, compared with 16 Democrats. Hatch joined Republican Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona in announcing an end to his Senate career.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., formally resigned Tuesday afternoon, nearly a month after he announced his plans to leave Congress after a swirl of sexual misconduct allegations that began in November.
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Martin of The New York Times; by Andrew Taylor, Joan Lowy and other staff members of The Associated Press; and by Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 01/03/2018