GOP Representative to Retire from Congress, Will Not Run for Office of Any Kind in 2024
Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana announced Friday that she will leave politics when her current term ends.
In saying she won’t seek re-election in 2024, Spartz, 44, becomes the first member of the House to announce retirement in the current election cycle, according to NBC News.
Spartz was elected to Congress in 2020 after a political career that began in 2017 in the Indiana state Senate.
“It’s been my honor representing Hoosiers in the Indiana State Senate and U.S. Congress and I appreciate the strong support on the ground,” she Friday in a statement.
Spartz said “2024 will mark seven years of holding elected office and over a decade in Republican politics. I won a lot of tough battles for the people and will work hard to win a few more in the next two years. However, being a working mom is tough and I need to spend more time with my two high school girls back home, so I will not run for any office in 2024.”
Spartz had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate in the 2024 election, according to Fox News. Republican Sen. Mike Braun, who currently occupies the seat, has said he will run for governor. Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana last month launched his campaign for the Senate seat.
Spartz emigrated from Ukraine in 2000, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Rep. Victoria Spartz says she won’t seek re-election in 2024, becoming the first House member to announce retirement in the current election cycle. https://t.co/w2rY4WdQe2
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 3, 2023
She told Roll Call she thought of herself as a “reluctant politician.”
“I have a lot of my own things I wanted to do in life. I’m going to get some stuff done and get the hell out of politics, for sure,” Spartz said.
Spartz emerged as a voice opposing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to remove several House Democrats from their committees.
“My job is not to please Kevin. My job is to make sure that my party is not going to let the American people down and will do the right thing,” she said, according to WISH-TV.
Spartz said the issue was larger than tit-for-tat politics.
“When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was asked what kind of government the delegates had created, he replied: ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ It’s been over 200 years since that time, but do we really appreciate what it means to have a Constitutional Republic, the rule of law, presumption of innocence and proper due process,” Spartz said in a release on her website.
“As someone who grew up under dictatorship in the Soviet Union, I cherish these freedoms tremendously and understand how hard (it) is to get them back when you lose them. Therefore, regardless of politics, I will vigorously defend our Constitution and our rights.”
Spartz said the House is not “a kangaroo court.”
“(We) have proper committees, like Ethics or Judiciary, to provide proper due processes to all individuals or we can lose credibility with the American people,” she said. “I adamantly argued for proper due processes last Congress as a member of the Judiciary Committee, so I am not planning to become a hypocrite now.”
“Two wrongs do not make a right. Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented actions last Congress to remove Reps. Greene and Gosar from their committees without proper due process,” she said in a separate release.
“Speaker McCarthy is taking unprecedented actions this Congress to deny some committee assignments to the minority without proper due process again,” she said, adding later that McCarthy “needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress and start governing for a change.”
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