Senator Thune will search a fourth time period after beforehand fascinated with retiring from congress.
AP / Carolyn Kaster
Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota will search a fourth time period this yr, he introduced Saturday — weeks after Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell publicly pressed him to withstand the temptation to retire.
“I’ve all the time promised that I might do the work, even when it was laborious, uncomfortable or unpopular. That work continues,” Thune mentioned in a press release he launched on Twitter.
“After cautious consideration and prayer, and with the help of my household, I’m asking South Dakotans for the chance to proceed serving them within the US Senate,” he added.
As Senate minority whip, the 61-year-old Thune is McConnell’s second in command — and broadly seen as his inheritor obvious.
However in December, Thune informed the Black Hills Pioneer that his spouse Kimberly was lobbying him to go away Washington behind after 24 years as a congressman and senator.
“She is finished with it,” he mentioned.
That set off alarm bells for McConnell, who hopes to wrest Senate management away from the Democrats on this yr’s midterm elections.
“He’s accomplished a terrific job as a whip,” McConnell informed radio host Hugh Hewitt final month. “It might be an actual setback for the nation and for our social gathering if he retires, and I definitely hope he gained’t.”
Thune is a heavy favourite to carry his seat in deep-red South Dakota regardless of the enmity of former President Donald Trump, who blasted him in 2020 for his unwillingness to problem the Electoral Faculty outcomes of the presidential election.
Trump has unsuccessfully urged South Dakota’s GOP governor, Kristi Noem, to mount a main problem towards Thune.
In 2016, Thune confronted no Republican main opposition and was re-elected with an amazing 72 p.c of the vote towards a little-known Democrat.
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