Rep. Denny Heck of Washington, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee and vocal advocate of President Trump’s impeachment, is retiring from Congress after the 2020 elections.
In a Medium post Wednesday, the 67-year-old cited the panel’s impeachment report as a reason for leaving the seat he first won in 2012. He blamed House Republicans for giving a pass to what he has called strong grounds to remove Trump from office over the Ukraine aid affair and a range of other matters.
“The countless hours I have spent in the investigation of Russian election interference and the impeachment inquiry have rendered my soul weary. I will never understand how some of my colleagues, in many ways good people, could ignore or deny the President’s unrelenting attack on a free press, his vicious character assassination of anyone who disagreed with him, and his demonstrably very distant relationship with the truth,” he said.
That largely echoes Heck’s comments, since Trump’s election, as a cable television regular. During the recent round of House Intelligence Committee hearings on the Ukraine matter, Heck proved an aggressive questioner of Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland.
Heck’s district is based in Washington’s capital of Olympia and also includes much of eastern Tacoma. In 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton beat Trump there 51%-39%. The district has a Democratic lean of +6, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index.
He lost his first congressional bid, in 2010, to Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler. After redistricting, Heck captured the newly drawn seat and has held it since.
Heck was a state representative in Washington from 1977-1985 and served as chief of staff to Gov. Booth Gardner from 1990 to 1993. He also founded and served as CEO of TWW, the state equivalent of C-SPAN.
Heck’s retirement means he’ll only have served two years in the House majority, which Democrats captured in the 2018 elections. He’s the 22nd House member to announce retirement next year without seeking other offices, including 15 Republicans and seven Democrats.
