Mike Pompeo Says He Won’t Run for Kansas’ Open Senate Seat

The following is an excerpt from Blaze Media’s daily Capitol Hill Brief email newsletter:

After a great deal of speculation about his political future, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he’s not running for Senate in his home state of Kansas. Pompeo, who served as a congressman from the Sunflower State before his executive branch appointment, told the Washington Examiner that he had no plans to make a play for a desk in the upper chamber.

“I am going to stay here,” Pompeo told the outlet in an interview. “There’s lots of people talking about it. The only one who’s not talking about it is me.”

The question remains who will replace outgoing Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, who announced his retirement in early January. Currently, the biggest name on the Republican side of the race is former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who headed up the White House’s short-lived commission on voter fraud and has a long record as an immigration hawk. Kobach’s candidacy, however, isn’t sitting well with Republican establishment types in Washington.

American Conservative Union chair Matt Schlapp has said he was considering a run, but has not announced. Now that Pompeo has officially announced he’s staying out of the race, the stage is set for other Republican candidates who wouldn’t have run against him.

Kansas hasn’t sent a Democratic senator to Washington since the 1930s. (For more from the author of “Mike Pompeo Says He Won’t Run for Kansas’ Open Senate Seat” please click HERE)

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