Arizona senator Jeff Flake announced Tuesday that he will not seek reelection in 2018, saying he could not secure victory without sacrificing his core principles.
“The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take, and that I can’t in good conscience take,” Flake told the Arizona Republic, which broke the news. “It would require me to believe in positions I don’t hold on such issues as trade and immigration, and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone.”
Flake has been cagey in recent weeks about whether he was committed to running, as THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s John McCormack wrote last week:
Flake, a prominent Trump critic, has hemorrhaged Republican support since the 2016 election. A recent poll showed only 25 percent of Republican primary voters in Arizona view him favorably, and he faced long odds in the primary against grassroots firebrand Kelli Ward, trailing her 58 percent to 31 percent in a September survey. When I spoke to Ward last month, she described Flake as “a candidate without a base.”
“Arizona voters are the big winner in Jeff Flake’s decision not to seek reelection,” Ward tweeted Tuesday.
In an emotional speech on the Senate floor, Flake denounced the current Republican party as giving in to a politics of resentment and criticized its elected officials for excusing President Trump.
“The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding, are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics,” Flake said. “It is clear to me for the moment we have given in or given up on those core principles in favor of the more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment. To be clear, the anger and resentment that the people feel at the royal mess we have created are justified. But anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy.”
As the news of Flake’s decision broke, many Republican senators made immediate statements praising his tenure in the Senate.
“He’s an outstanding senator,” Sen. Bob Corker, a fellow Trump critic, told reporters. “Very strong, very principled, very patriotic, very much what I would call a real conservative. He’s somebody that we’re going to miss … One of the finest people in the United States Senate.”
“Jeff Flake is a tremendous and valuable member of the U.S. Senate, and I have no doubt he will continue to be an important voice in policy and public service going forward,” Sen. Cory Gardner said.
“He’s been a tremendous friend,” Sen. Susan Collins said. “He is a leader of great intelligence and the utmost integrity, and the Senate will be a lesser place without his service.”
President Trump hammered Flake on multiple occasions in response to the senator’s longstanding criticism, at one point calling him “toxic.” The White House’s immediate response to the Arizona Republican’s retirement deflected the personal disagreement between the two men, but bitingly acknowledged the politics of the matter.
“I haven’t spoken with [Trump] directly since the announcement by Sen. Flake, but I think that based on previous statements and certainly based on the lack of support he has from the people of Arizona it’s probably a good move,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said.
