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U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, 81, announced his retirement after eight terms and nearly five decades in office during a press conference in his home state of Vermont yesterday.
“While I will continue to serve Vermont, Marcelle (his wife) and I have reached the conclusion that it is time to put down this gavel,” Leahy said. “It is time to pass the torch to the next Vermonter who will carry on this work for our great state.”
“It’s time to come home.”
Leahy will finish the remainder of his term, which runs through January 2023.
Leahy is the longest-serving senator in Vermont history and the fifth-longest serving senator in U.S. history.
As Senate president pro tempore, he is currently third in the line of presidential succession, following the vice president and speaker of the House.
His retirement opens the door to Vermont’s first open congressional seat in 15 years, during an election cycle where Democrats and Republicans will be fighting tooth and nail to clinch a Senate majority.
When there was last an open Senate seat in Vermont’s delegation in 2006, then-U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., decided to vacate his seat and make a play for the upper chamber. His successor in the House, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who has held Vermont’s lone at-large congressional seat for the last 14 years, is widely expected to follow in Sanders’ footsteps and run for Leahy’s now-open seat.
In a written statement Monday, Sen. Sanders commended his colleague’s work throughout his many years and several chairmanships in the Senate, calling him “a towering figure as chairman of the Agriculture Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Appropriations Committee.”
“I know I speak for all Vermonters in expressing the deep gratitude we feel for the extraordinary role that Pat Leahy has played in representing Vermont in the U.S. Senate for the last 46 years,” Sanders said. “He leaves a unique legacy that will be impossible to match.”
Leahy joins the growing list of lawmakers, both Democratic and Republican, that arent seeking re-election after their current terms.
