© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

US Representative Pompeo Launches Re-Election Bid

Hugo Phan
/
KMUW/File photo
U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo

Congressman Mike Pompeo officially launched his re-election bid on Monday for Kansas’ 4th District.

As KMUW’s Deborah Shaar reports, the House Republican decided against making a run for the U.S. Senate.

Pompeo says he began exploring a run for the U.S. Senate earlier this month after hearing conflicting messages about whether the Senate should hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee.

Pompeo calls filling the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court “the trans-generational issue of our time” and wants to let a newly elected president and Congress have a say in the process.

“No fight is more worth having," he wrote in a statement. "The Senate cannot fold again on this one. As I watched this waffling up close, I began to contemplate a Senate run.”

The congressman from Wichita was looking to challenge first time Senator Jerry Moran.

Pompeo fueled speculation the past three weeks by attacking Moran on the issues of the Supreme Court hearings and abolishing the IRS.

Pompeo is going for a fourth term in the House of Representatives.

“The 85 days remaining before the first votes are cast plus my especially consuming commitments to current duties on the Benghazi Committee, the House Intelligence Committee and a new investigatory Intelligence Task Force will preclude the kind of campaign that Kansans deserve and of which they would be justifiably proud,” he wrote.

“Kansas is a big and glorious state," he continued. "To simply blanket it with TV and radio ads and bombard voters with direct mail might well prove to be effective and sufficient to win in both August and November. But, it would not square with the way Susan and I view our obligation to you.”

The primary is August 2.

--

Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar

 
To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

 

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.