Senior Republicans are floating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as their preferred successor to Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who announced on Friday that he was retiring in 2020.
Pompeo was a Republican congressman from Kansas before President Donald Trump tapped him to serve as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and after that, as the nation’s top diplomat. Because Pompeo is a key member of Trump’s Cabinet, overt efforts to recruit him to run for Senate could be verboten. But top Republicans are eagerly promoting the idea, hoping it entices the secretary of state to re-enter electoral politics.
“Everybody wants Mike Pompeo. He would clear the field and cruise to a general election victory in a state where Republicans had mixed success last cycle,” a senior Republican strategist said. “Everybody who cares about maintaining our Senate majority wants him to be our candidate.”
In the 2018 midterm elections, the Democratic Party flipped the Kansas governor’s mansion and a suburban Kansas City House seat in the eastern part of the state. There were other signs, too, of political erosion for the Republican Party in the perennially red state. In Pompeo, Republicans see a politically formidable figure who, despite working for Trump, hails from the traditional wing of the GOP and could appeal to a broader Kansas electorate and hold the Senate seat with ease.
Roberts, 82, narrowly survived a Republican primary in 2014 against an upstart Tea Party challenger before cruising to victory in the general election against a Democrat-aligned independent. However, Roberts experienced a rocky general election campaign, only breaking away toward the end of the race. On Friday, the senator said he would serve out the remainder of his current term but not stand for re-election.
“I intend to sprint to the finish line,” Roberts said during an announcement in Manhattan, Kan.
Roberts, serving his fourth term in the Senate, was in the House before that and has worked in Washington for decades.
