© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: President U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) speaks with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former CIA Director and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta during a House Select Committee hearing on Strategic Competitiveness.
By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chairs the House select committee on competition with China, said on Saturday he will not run for re-election, four days after he was one of four Republicans on the House committee. House of Representatives who opposed the party leadership and voted. against charging President Joe Biden's top border official.
Gallagher, 39, a four-term member of the House of Representatives and former Marine Corps intelligence officer, issued a statement noting that the framers of the U.S. Constitution had not intended elective offices to be for life.
“Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career, and believe me, Congress is not a place to grow old. And that's why, with great regret, I have decided not to run for re-election,” he said in the statement.
Gallagher joined three other Republican members of the House of Representatives on Tuesday in voting against the ouster of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. As the effort failed by one vote, Gallagher was surrounded in the House by members of his party urging him to change his vote.
Gallagher later said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that impeachment would not only fail to resolve problems at the Mexican border but “would also set a dangerous new precedent that would be used against future Republican administrations.”
Gallagher, a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, has spent much of his time this year chairing the Chinese Communist Party Select Committee, a bipartisan panel charged with investigating U.S. relations with China and develop strategies to help improve the situation in the country. ability to compete with China.
Republicans formed the select committee when they took control of the House in January 2023, as part of an effort to raise awareness about the issues behind rising tensions with China. A tough line on China is one of the few policies with bipartisan support in the deeply divided US Congress, and Gallagher has been praised for working seamlessly with Democrats on the panel.
