Sen. Patrick Leahy is retiring after 8 terms
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Monday he won’t seek reelection next year to the seat that he has held since 1975. His career has included major roles on issues such as civil liberties and financing the government and began before four of his current colleagues were born.
“It’s time to come home,” said Leahy, 81. He made the announcement in the Vermont State House, blocks from where he grew up.
The decision by Leahy, among the Senate’s more liberal members, marks the end of a political era. He’s the last of the so-called Watergate babies, the surge of congressional Democrats elected in 1974 after President Richard Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.
He’s also among a dwindling group from a more collegial era when senators had more harmonious relationships despite ideological differences.
Leahy became the first Democrat facing reelection next year in the 50-50 Senate to say he’ll retire. His state has shifted from solidly Republican to deep blue while he has been a senator, and his seat seems securely in Democratic hands.
He chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, which injects him into this fall’s budget fight. He was chair or top Democrat on the Judiciary committee for two decades and was atop the Agriculture panel for 10 years. But inside the Capitol, he’s equally known as a photography buff who wanders the corridors with a camera slung around his neck and for shepherding around celebrities, including members of his beloved Grateful Dead.
In keeping with his hobby, Leahy took pictures at the White House on Monday as President Joe Biden signed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. He told reporters that Biden, a Senate colleague for decades, “was kind enough to call me at home” over the weekend, but he declined to provide details.
Leahy is the longestserving sitting senator, and by the time his term expires in January 2023, he’ll have served for 48 years, the third-longest tenure ever. He’s the fifth-oldest current senator, among six 80somethings who include his Vermont colleague, Bernie Sanders, 80.
Sens. Tom Cotton, RArk., Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., were born after Leahy entered the Senate.
Atop the Senate Appropriations Committee, Leahy has followed that panel’s tradition and worked closely with senior Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama as it distributes hundreds of billions of dollars among federal agencies and to lawmakers’ states. But the process has devolved into an annual struggle to prevent federal shutdowns as the two parties fight over federal borrowing and other issues.
“We’re different. We’ve got different political philosophies,” Shelby, 87 and also retiring, said in an interview.
Leahy will leave the chamber after eight terms with a record of promoting human rights, working to ban land mines and championing the environment.
He’s one of the few senators who have voted on the nomination of every current Supreme Court justice, supporting all three Democratic nominees and opposing every GOP pick, except for Chief Justice John Roberts. He has helped write bills on gun control, patents and land mines, which led to his friendship with rock musician Bono, a fellow landmine opponent whom he has shown around the Capitol.
An ardent Batman fan, Leahy has appeared briefly in five Batman movies, telling the Joker in “The Dark Knight” in 2008, “We’re not intimidated by thugs.”
As the longest-serving member of the Senate’s majority party, Leahy is that chamber’s president pro tempore. That largely ceremonial post makes him third in line to the presidency, after Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Democrats control the 50-50 Senate because of Harris’ tiebreaking vote, making every seat crucial in next year’s election.
But the GOP is defending 20 seats to Democrats’ 14. Of the five announced GOP retirees, three are in states that seem competitive — North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. One Republican senator who has yet to announce whether he’ll seek reelection is Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, a swing state.