Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, who drew wide attention for quoting the Bible to allay concerns of climate change and resulting rising sea levels, announced he would retire when his current House term ends in early 2021.
Shimkus, 61, made the announcement Friday on the Mark Reardon Show, on KMOX, a St. Louis, Missouri, radio station that has a large audience in the congressman’s downstate Illinois district.
Shimkus is the latest House Republican to call it quits after 2020, a reflection in part of the GOP’s minority status after the 2018 Democratic wave. Including Shimkus, 11 House Republicans have announced their retirements, compared to three House Democrats.
A West Point graduate who retired from the Army Reserve in 2008 as a lieutenant colonel, Shimkus later earned an MBA. In 1990 he was elected treasurer of Madison County, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. In 1996 he won the seat of Democratic Rep. Richard Durbin, who was elected to the Senate and is now minority whip.
A staunch conservative in the House, Shimkus’ most noteworthy moment in Washington came in March 2009 during an Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, when he quoted an exchange between God and Noah in Genesis, on how to adapt policies to deal with climate change. Shimkus said God decides when the “earth will end,” suggesting global warming isn’t something to worry about because God said he wouldn’t destroy the Earth after Noah’s flood.
Environmentalists pilloried Shimkus for the remark, but he stood by it through much of his time in Congress. But a decade or so later, as a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Shimkus and fellow Republican lawmakers looked to engage with the Democratic majority on climate change. They sought to promote private sector innovation as an alternative to regulation, taxes, or mandates.
“I have traveled the district quite a bit, and have only had one constituent who reached out and said, ‘What the heck are you doing?’” Shimkus told the Washington Examiner in May. “What I tell them we are trying to do is keep a measured approach to reduce the carbon footprint while continuing to have a growing economy.”
The Illinois district represented by Shimkus, the 15th, covers the eastern and southeastern portions of the state, bordering Indiana and Kentucky. Republicans have a 21 point voter registration advantage meaning the district is likely to stay in GOP hands in the 2020 elections.
— Josh Siegel contributed to this report.
