Republican Senator Jeff Flake has announced that he will serve out his term but not seek re-election for the upcoming 2018 campaigns.
Flake has been critical of the Trump administration even going as far as to blast Trump and the GOP in his book “Conscience of a Conservative” and Flake has already been struggling in pre-election polls as it is.
He told The Arizona Republic ahead of his announcement that he has become convinced “there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.”
He essentially puts the move solely on what he considers to be a Trump-dominated GOP and while he says he holds a more “traditional” conservative view, he feels out of place with the libertarian-leaning conservative Republicans.
“Here’s the bottom line: The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take, and that I can’t in good conscience take,” Flake told The Republic in a telephone interview. “It would require me to believe in positions I don’t hold on such issues as trade and immigration and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone.”
As of Sept. 30, Flake’s campaign had $3.4 million on hand. He has continued to raise money — as recently as Thursday, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headlined a fundraiser for him in Arizona.
Check him out on.. ugh… Morning Joe talking that smack.
As reported by AZ Central:
Condemning the nastiness of Republican politics in the era of President Donald Trump, Sen. Jeff Flake on Tuesday announced he will serve out the remainder of his term but will not seek re-election in 2018.
The bombshell, which Flake, R-Ariz., intended to detail Tuesday afternoon on the Senate floor, will further roil Republican hopes of keeping the party’s 52-seat Senate majority in the midterm elections of Trump’s first term, when the president’s party historically loses seats in Congress.
It also likely will upend the race for Flake’s seat.
Flake, one of the Senate’s more prominent critics of President Donald Trump, has been struggling in the polls.