House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce will retire rather than seek re-election in 2018, the California Republican announced Monday.
“I have decided not to seek reelection in November,” Royce announced in a Monday statement.
The decision comes days after President Trump tapped Royce’s wife for a senior position at the State Department, which the Foreign Affairs Committee oversees. Royce was first elected in 1992, representing one of the GOP outposts in the Democratic stronghold that is California. But Democrats plan to make an aggressive push to win the seat, after Hillary Clinton carried the district in 2016 by nine points.
“I want to focus fully on the urgent threats facing our nation, including: the brutal, corrupt and dangerous regimes in Pyongyang and Tehran, Vladimir Putin’s continued efforts to weaponize information to fracture western democracies, and growing terrorist threats in Africa and Central Asia,” Royce, who is term-limited from his Foreign Affairs chairmanship by House rules, said in a Monday evening statement.
New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel, gave Royce a warm salute.
“I view the Foreign Affairs Committee as the most bipartisan committee in Congress,” Engel said. “In the last five years, we’ve produced legislation that has made the United States safer and stronger, helping advance our interests and values around the world. We’ve left politics at the water’s edge to do what’s right for our country. For all those accomplishments, we have Ed Royce to thank.”
Still, Royce’s retirement is a boon to Democratic hopes of retaking the House majority. Royce won re-election in 2016 by 14 points, but Clinton’s success the same year moved the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to hope that an anti-Trump backlash in Orange County, Calif., might flip the seat.
“Our wealthier enclaves didn’t vote in as high a margin for the Republican candidate as they have in the past,” Orange County GOP Chairman Fred Whitaker acknowledged in March. “Meanwhile, the Latino demographic hasn’t been with us lately, and the Asian vote wasn’t as strong. Some of that had to do with Trump. He just didn’t resonate.”
National Republicans saluted Royce for “serving his country with distinction” as a foreign policy leader in the House, while projecting confidence about their plan to hold the seat.
“Republicans are fired up and ready to hold this seat. Orange County has no shortage of Republican talent and a highly organized ground effort with the NRCC at the forefront,” National Republican Campaign Chairman Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, said following Royce’s announcement. “We have just one message for Democrats who think they can compete for this seat: bring it on.”
