Orrin Hatch to Retire from Senate, Opening Path for Mitt Romney
Orrin Hatch to Retire from Senate, Opening Path for Mitt Romney
By JONATHAN MARTIN JAN. 2, 2018
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Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, after the tax bill passed last month. Credit Tom Brenner/The New York Times
Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the longest-serving Senate Republican, plans to announce on Tuesday he will retire at the end of the year, rebuffing the pleas of President Trump to seek an eighth term and paving the way for Mitt Romney to run for the seat.
Mr. Hatch intends to announce his decision Tuesday afternoon via a video announcement, according to two Republican officials briefed on the plans.
Mr. Hatch, 83, was under heavy pressure from Mr. Trump to seek re-election and block Mr. Romney, who has been harshly critical of the president. But Mr. Hatch, who emerged as one of the president’s most avid loyalists in the Senate, decided to retire after discussing the matter with his family over the holidays. The veteran senator was also facing harsh poll numbers in Utah, where 75 percent of voters indicated in a survey last fall that they did not want him to run again.
Mr. Hatch’s decision comes just weeks after Mr. Trump signed a sweeping tax overhaul into law, a measure that the senator helped write as chairman of the Finance Committee.
The bill represented something of a capstone to Mr. Hatch’s four decades in Congress and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, even deemed it as such last month in what was seen as a subtle effort to usher his colleague to the exits.
Mr. Hatch’s decision clears the way for the political resurrection of Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee who is now a Utah resident and is popular in the Mormon-heavy state. Mr. Romney has told associates he would likely run if Mr. Hatch retires.
“It would be difficult to defeat Mitt Romney if he were running here,” said David Hansen, a longtime Utah Republican strategist and chairman of Mr. Hatch’s political organization.
But Mr. Hatch had privately told Mr. Romney he was not sure he was ready to leave a seat he has held since 1977 and White House officials did all they could to nudge him into another campaign. Last month, Mr. Trump flew with Mr. Hatch on Air Force One to Utah for a day of events that was aimed entirely at lobbying the senator to run again.
Mr. Trump announced he was vastly shrinking two of Utah’s sprawling national monuments, reversing decisions made by President Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at the request of the senator. And the president used a speech in Salt Lake City to say that he hoped Mr. Hatch would “continue to serve your state and your country in the Senate for a very long time to come.”
The senator returned the favor at the White House when Mr. Trump signed the tax measure, calling him “one heck of a leader.”
“We are going to make this the greatest presidency we have seen, not only in generations, but maybe ever,” Mr. Hatch said.
WRITE A COMMENTThe president has had Mr. Romney on his mind. Over golf earlier this year, Mr. Trump asked Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, what he thought of the former Republican nominee. (Mr. Graham said he praised Mr. Romney and predicted he would be a solid senator.)
Mr. Romney repeatedly assailed the president during the 2016 campaign, calling Mr. Trump “a fraud,” and Mr. Trump returned the favor, stating that Mr. Romney “choked like a dog” in the 2012 race. The two had something of a rapprochement after the election when Mr. Romney was briefly considered as secretary of state, but White House advisers are uneasy about having such a well-known critic in the Senate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/u...ney-trump.html