Peter King has just announced he’s retiring from Congress after his term is up in 2020:
ROLL CALL – Rep. Peter T. King, a 14-term Republican from New York’s Long Island, announced Monday on Facebook he will not run for reelection.
“The prime reason for my decision was that after 28 years of spending 4 days a week in Washington, D.C., it is time to end the weekly commute and be home in Seaford,” King said in a post on Facebook.
A former chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, King cited his work to secure health benefits for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Superstorm Sandy. He also said he was proud of “being consistently cited for bipartisanship.”
King was reelected in 2018 with 53 percent of the vote, and President Donald Trump carried the 2nd District by 9 percentage points in 2016. But with suburbs around the country trending away from the GOP, King was on the “retirement watch list” unveiled in February by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales has rated the race for New York’s 2nd District Likely Republican.
It sounds like King is in a solid Republican district since he won it in 2018 by 6 points and Trump won it by 9 points in 2016. But it is in New York so it’s not one I’d call safe, especially if Democrats put a strong candidate there.
Even if the district is safe and another Republican wins, we all know these New York Republicans are not conservative, as King demonstrated with his hatred of Ted Cruz in 2016.
UPDATE: Or maybe we could get lucky…
Rumors are already swirling among GOP operatives in NY State that Assemblyman @TheMikeLiPetri is a likely successor to the retiring Rep. Pete King
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) November 11, 2019
LiPetri is a one-term Assemblyman who defeated an incumbent Democrat in the heart of King’s district and gain attention for standing up for NYPD officers who were being assaulted with buckets of water of the summer.
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) November 11, 2019
While King has been a long time incumbent, he has been extremely liberal on issues like immigration and war. Advocating for amnesty and endless invasions. So this might be a very positive change
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) November 11, 2019