House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) will not run for reelection this year, making him the latest House Republican to retire from Congress as the GOP seeks to hold on to its slim majority next year.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, Green said the decision came after tough deliberation but after the three-term incumbent ultimately decided he had accomplished the goals he originally campaigned on.
“It’s pretty clear that the founders, the framers of the Constitution at least, intended the people’s representatives to serve for a season and then go home,” Green said. “We’re not intended to be here to grow old in Congress. So, there’s that constitutional piece that really kind of honestly probably is what pushed me over the edge.”
Green’s retirement comes on the heels of the historic vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, led by the House Committee on Homeland Security. In fact, completing the monthslong effort partly played a role in Green’s decision to step down at the end of his term.
Throughout the investigation into Mayorkas, Green said he spent much of his time examining the Constitution to charge the Biden administration official with high crimes and misdemeanors — which he said was the pinnacle of his career.
“We did exactly what I had planned to do, and that was hold the administration accountable for the failure at the border,” Green said. “So impeaching Mayorkas was kind of the last thing.”
Green also said he had grown restless and “very frustrated” with his role in Congress and that it became clear to him as a lawmaker that “the fight is not in Washington. The fight is with Washington.”
“All my life, I’ve served this country in some capacity,” Green said. “I have 24 years in the Army, six years as a state senator, and I had a six-year hiatus … but now I’m here in Congress. I think the fight is actually between the states and Washington.”
Green’s announcement is the latest in a string of high-profile retirements in the House as the fourth GOP committee chair to forgo reelection next year, joining the ranks of Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-TX), Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA.), Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-NC), and House Select Committee on China Chair Mike Gallagher (R-WI).
It is not yet clear what Green intends to do after his term expires in January 2025, although the chairman told the Washington Examiner he plans to “find some way to serve the country, and I’ll find some way to serve the state of Tennessee.”
In the meantime, Green said he plans to help former President Donald Trump get reelected in November.
“I want to go out, and I want to go out on top,” Green said. “I just want to go out having done what I said I was going to do and then move on to what’s next for me to serve in Tennessee and then our country.”
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More than 40 House incumbents have already announced they won’t seek reelection in 2024, marking one of the highest rates of retirement at this point in an election cycle over the last decade. That number includes 21 Republicans who announced they won’t run for another term as well as 23 Democrats, according to a list compiled by the House Press Gallery.
The number of retirements is approaching but has not reached 2018’s total when 52 members stepped down from office. That marked the most incumbent retirements recorded since the 1993 cycle when 65 members opted not to run for reelection.
