In a shocking turn of events, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey announced that he will not seek reelection to his seat in 2022 and he will not be running for governor that year either.
This means that Pennsylvania Republicans will lose their most high-profile politician during the 2022 midterms in the critical swing state. Tommey had previously shown interest in running for governor and was considered the odds-on favorite to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee if he did run for office in 2022.
However, that will not be the case. Toomey said, “I will not be running for reelection in 2022 and I will not be running for governor. I will serve out the remainder of my term,” and added that his “plan is to go back to the private sector.”
Toomey explained that his reasons for reaching this decision “are not political, they’re personal.”
Democrat Governor Tom Wolf is not permitted to run for reelection in 2022 because of the state’s gubernatorial term limits leaving two open-seat statewide elections in Pennsylvania during the midterms. That’s one for the governor’s office and one for Toomey’s Senate seat.
Lawrence Tabas, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party thanked Senator Toomey for his many years of service to the people of Pennsylvania and said in a statement, “Unlike so many elected officials before him, Senator Toomey changed Washington D.C., not the other way around.”
“The Republican Party will miss Senator Toomey and his leadership, but he will forever have a place in the PAGOP moving forward,” he added.
Toomey has not revealed any specific plans for what to do after he leaves the Senate. He said, “My intention is to work as hard as I possibly can. I will have the luxury in a way of not having a campaign to manage at the same time.”
He also complimented his counterpart from Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Democrat, saying they have “outpaced … almost every other divided delegation in the Senate in the category of filling vacancies on the federal bench and we’ve done so with just some wonderful, talented people across Pennsylvania.”
Senator Toomey was one of the last in his party to announce his support for moving forward with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court before November’s presidential election. In 2016 he narrowly won reelection and is the only statewide Republican elected official in Pennsylvania who is not a judge.
