Longest-serving US Senator Patrick Leahy Announces Retirement

Democrat Patrick Leahy, Senator from USA who has been in Congress the longest, announced on Monday that he will retire and will not run for reelection in the 2022 legislative elections, thus ending half a century of his political career.

Leahy, 81 years old and representative of the state of Vermont, currently occupies the Presidential of the powerful Senate Appropriations committee and is the highest ranking legislator in the judicial and agriculture committee, in addition to being an influential figure within the Democratic Party.

“It is time to pass the torch to the next Vermontese who will continue this work for our great state. It’s time to go home “, proclaimed Leahy at a press conference in his home state.

Leahy was elected to the Senate for the first time in 1974 as part of the so-called “Watergate Babies”, a group of Democrats who first came to Congress after the scandal of the same name that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon (1969-1974) from the Republican Party.

On the most personal level, Leahy He is a huge comic book fan and has appeared in five Batman movies on the grounds that “doing the right thing is something you do for others and not yourself,” a lesson that he believes Washington should learn from Bruce Wayne. .

His retirement will now open a fierce battle within the two parties to see who could be Leahy’s successor in Vermont, a state known for its progressive ideas.

The other Senate representative for Vermont is Bernie Sanders, who ran in the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 2016 and 2020.

The state of Vermont is the only state in the US that has not yet sent a woman to represent it in Congress.

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