Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who has spent over 30 years in public service, will not seek re-election next year.
Champion of LGBT civil rights, California Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, just announced she will not seek re-election next year. The 74-year old New York City-born former Chairperson of the Senate Ethics Committee and of the Senate Environment Committee has served in Congress since 1983. She became a U.S. Senator in 1993 as the junior Senator from California, serving with Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
And she made her announcement with unique style, in a poem.
“I am never going to retire — the work is too important,†Boxer said in a video interview with one of her grandsons. “But I am not going to be running for the Senate in 2016.â€
Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, was shocked:
Boxer was one of the few to vote against DOMA in 1996, and against a federal amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and she was a co-sponsor of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. Boxer also opposed Prop 8, and at least since 2010 officially supported marriage equality.
The New York Times notes that the “decision by Ms. Boxer, who is 74, was widely expected and comes nearly two years before she was to face re-election. It is unlikely to change the fight for control of the Senate in 2016; California is overwhelmingly Democratic, and officials from both parties said a Republican would have an extremely difficult time winning the seat.”
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Image via YouTube