WASHINGTON: Veteran Democrat Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia announced Friday that he will not seek re-election to the US Senate next year, providing Republicans a prime opportunity to pick up a seat.
The lawmaker has been a longtime defender of the rights of laborers and the poor, and was an initial supporter of using US military force against the regime of Iraq's Saddam Hussein before becoming a fierce critic of US president George W. Bush and his war policies.
"As I approach 50 years of public service in West Virginia, I've decided that 2014 will be the right moment for me to find new ways to fight for the causes I believe in," Rockefeller said in a statement released as he spoke to supporters and media in state capital, Charleston.
"Championing those most in need has been my life's calling, and I will never stop fighting to make a difference for the people who mean so much to me."
Rockefeller, 75, a two-term West Virginia governor, was first elected to the Senate in 1984.
He is a great-grandson of oil tycoon John Rockefeller, and the only Democrat in the Republican family dynasty to serve in national politics.
Rockefeller is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, where he said he has led "exhilarating fights... to make our cars more efficient, our phone bills more truthful, our Coast Guard more agile, and the Internet more safe."
He also served as chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and helped implement reform of the intelligence community.
President Barack Obama lauded Rockefeller's "lifetime of service" and said his fellow Democrat would be missed on Capitol Hill.
"From his time in the state legislature to the governor's office to the Senate floor, Jay has built an impressive legacy, one that can be found in the children who have better schools, the miners who have safer working conditions (and) the seniors who have retired with greater dignity," Obama said in a statement.
Rockefeller stressed that he would not shy away from the challenges facing lawmakers in the next two years, notably a looming series of fiscal battles.
"We've got a really rough debt ceiling in several weeks coming up," he said, referring to the debate over extending US borrowing authority. "I want to be part of that fight."
Rockefeller's departure sets up a succession scramble, with Republicans eager to chip away at the Democrats' 55-45 hold of the 100-seat Senate.
House Republican Shelley Capito has announced in November that she would run for Rockefeller's seat in 2014.
Since his first Senate victory Rockefeller has mostly coasted to re-election, but with Obama deeply unpopular in West Virginia, no one doubts the difficulty the senator would have faced in winning a sixth term.
West Virginia, among the poorest states in the nation, voted Democratic in presidential elections from 1988 to 1996, but from 2000 onward it has been reliably Republican.
Although a West Virginia Republican has not served in the Senate since 1958, Capito has cited the recent political shift as a sign that Republicans now have a strong shot.
Congressman Nick Rahall, a 19-term Democrat, hailed Rockefeller as a lawmaker who "pledged his heart, mind and strength" to West Virginians ever since he first went to the state as an anti-poverty worker in the early 1960s.
-AFP/ac
Rockefeller to retire from US Senate
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Rockefeller to retire from US Senate
