Representative Mike Gallagher (R., Wisc.), chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, will not seek reelection this November.
“The Framers intended citizens to serve in Congress for a season and then return to their private lives,” Gallagher said in his announcement. “Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old. And so, with a heavy heart, I have decided not to run for re-election.”
Gallagher said he will transition to the private sector where he will likely dedicate himself to foreign policy interests, namely “restoring conventional deterrence in order to prevent a war with China, and so whatever I do next will be an extension of that mission,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The congressman’s decision comes only days after he, defecting from the Republican caucus, opposed the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The articles of impeachment accuse Mayorkas, who has presided over record levels of illegal immigration, of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust.”
Gallagher, alongside Republican Representatives Tom McClintock of California and Ken Buck of Colorado, joined the united Democratic caucus to vote against the impeachment. The resolution was defeated 216 to 214. Some GOP House members criticized those members who refused to vote “yes,” with Representative Nancy Mace (S.C.) saying those four chose “to snub the will of the people.”
Gallagher explained his departure from his party in a Wall Street Journal op-ed following the vote. The lawmaker argued that impeachment wouldn’t hold the primary aggressor of the border crisis, President Biden, accountable and “would only pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.” The impeachment also would be merely symbolic, he suggested, without combatting mass migration.
Republicans in the House have used similar logic to dismiss outright the Senate compromise border deal, which mandates a “shutdown of the border” if illegal crossings exceed 5,000 a day. The bill, many House Republicans said, would perpetuate illegal immigration by setting a trigger number that must be hit before the president can invoke Title 42–type authority to exclude illegal aliens. Under current law, the president is already supposed to be excluding illegal immigrants.
Republicans also said last week that the deal is “riddled with loopholes that grant far too much discretionary authority to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has proven he will exploit every measure possible, in defiance of the law, to keep the border open.”
Gallagher told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the backlash from colleagues over his refusal to support Mayorkas’ impeachment did not factor into his decision to leave Congress.
“I feel, honestly, like people get it, and they can accept the fact that they don’t have to agree with you 100%,” he told the publication. Gallagher said later in the interview: “The news cycle is so short that I just don’t think that stuff lasts.”