Rodney Frelinghuysen, Powerful House Republican, Announces He Will Not Seek Re-Election
bye bye
Rodney Frelinghuysen, Powerful House Republican, Announces He Will Not Seek Re-Election
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/nyregion/frelinghuysen-house-republican-retiring.html
Nick Corasaniti and Shane Goldmacher
Jan 29, 2018
United States Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican who is chairman of the powerful appropriations committee, announced on Monday that he will not seek re-election in November. J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
With Mr. Frelinghuysen’s decision to retire at the end of his term, which party leaders for months had feared was a possibility, he became the latest prominent Republican to head for the exits this year ahead of what party strategists worry could be a brutal fall election. Among those are eight who lead some of the House’s most powerful committees.
Mr. Frelinghuysen, 71, did not give a specific reason for not running, but he was likely to face the stiffest challenge in his nearly quarter-century occupying his northern New Jersey seat and his departure gives the Democratic Party a better chance of winning the seat this fall.
Thomas M. Reynolds, who ran the national campaign arm of House Republicans in 2004 and 2006, said he tapped out a succinct email to a colleague upon hearing the news: “Wow.”
Mr. Reynolds said the retirement of a sitting chairman of the appropriations committee, which has long been one of the most sought-after and powerful posts in the House, is highly unusual. Mr. Frelinghuysen was eligible to serve as chairman until 2023.
“It’s an attention grabber,” Mr. Reynolds said in an interview. “Republicans will try to put some sort of a decent face on it but this was not good news for Republicans.”
Mr. Frelinghuysen is the 40th Republican to have left or to announce plans to leave the House, either through retirement, to join President Trump’s administration or to run for another office. Some of those unexpectedly open seats have boosted Democratic hopes of winning the two-dozen seats they would need in 2018 to wrest back control of the chamber.
Though New Jersey’s 11th district has been held by Mr. Frelinghuysen for more than 23 years, and had once been represented for two decades by his father, shifting demographics and political currents in the affluent and suburban area suggest that the Democratic Party may be ascendant.....................................
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