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Republican Trump Critic Adam Kinzinger Won’t Seek Re-Election

Republican Trump Critic Adam Kinzinger Won’t Seek Re-Election

Six-term Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said Friday he isn’t running for re-election next year and plans to launch a non-partisan group as a new political platform.

Kinzinger, a critic of former President Donald Trump and one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him in January, had previously signaled he might retire because his safe Republican district was being carved up in a reshaping of the state’s political map.

Republican Trump Critic Adam Kinzinger Won’t Seek Re-Election

But he also has become a target of pro-Trump forces in the GOP and likely would have faced a primary challenge no matter what type of new district he wound up in. He is serving along with Liz Cheney of Wyoming as one of only two Republicans on the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, which in part has been focusing on the activities of Trump and his former aides before, during and after the attack.

In a video announcement Friday, Kinzinger, 43, said he has witnessed from Congress the nation’s “rooted divisiveness” and it has “become increasingly obvious to me that in order for me to break the narrative, I cannot focus on both a re-election to Congress and a broader fight nationwide.”

“This country is in an incredibly perilous time,” he said. “Our political parties only survive by appealing to the most motivated and most extremist elements.”

The organization he is launching, named Country First, bills itself as “a home for reasonable people of goodwill, seeking common ground to make our country better for future generations.”

Kinzinger -- who had previously said he was not ruling out future bids for senator or governor -- said in the video that this is not the end of his political future “but the beginning.”

Kinzinger in his video said he “stands in awe” of the nine other Republicans who joined him in voting to impeach Trump over the former president’s role in stoking the mob that stormed the Capitol, knowing it would be detrimental to their careers.

Kinzinger becomes the second Republican House member who voted to impeach Trump who’s not seeking re-election. Last month, Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said he wouldn’t run again rather than face a primary challenge from an opponent endorsed by the former president.

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