Toomey announces retirement at end of 2022

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is poised to become chairman of the Senate Banking Committee if Republicans keep the Senate majority, announced Monday that he will retire from Congress at the end of 2022.

Toomey, who is in his second Senate term, also said he has decided not to run for governor in 2022 and instead will return to the private sector, although he doesn’t have any “specific plans” for what he’ll do after 18 years of public service in Washington — three House terms and two Senate terms.

Toomey, 58, said his decision was driven by “personal” reasons and not “political reasons,” adding that President Trump’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis and partisan gridlock in Washington were not factors.

“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 for a little over two years that are left to the current term and after that my plan is to go back to the private sector,” Toomey said at a press conference in Bethlehem, Pa.

“By the time I finish this term, I will have been in public office for 18 years over a 24-year period,” he said, noting he took a six-year hiatus between his House and Senate stints.

The Pennsylvania senator said he decided to announce his decision before the 2022 election cycle because he was being flooded with calls from supporters offering to help him run for a third term or for governor.

He said he also wanted to give an early heads up to other Pennsylvania Republicans who may be thinking about running for his Senate seat in the next cycle.

Toomey said he is looking forward to spending more time with his family in Pennsylvania and has “no specific plans” and is “not going to spend time or energy thinking about what I’ll do later” because “I have a lot of work still ahead of me.”

Toomey represents one of at least 20 Republican seats that will be up for reelection in 2022. Had he decided to run for another term, he would have been a top Democratic target.

He said now that he has decided to retire, he will be able to focus on his work as the possible chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and an influential member of the Senate Finance Committee.

“It is my hope that I’ll be chairman of the Senate Banking Committee because I’m hopeful and cautiously optimistic that my Republican colleagues will prevail in a number of tough races and we will be in the majority,” he said. “I hope to be serving these last two years with President Donald Trump having been reelected. I support his campaign and I support his reelection.”

Toomey declined to say in 2016, when he was running for a second term, whether he would vote for Trump and only announced his support just as the polls closed.

–Updated at 10:54 a.m.