Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., participates in the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th Committee markup to vote on adopting the report “Recommending that the House of Representatives Cite Stephen K. Bannon for Criminal Contempt of Congress” on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021.
Bill Clark | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an outspoken Trump critic and one of two Republicans on the Jan. 6 House select committee, announced Friday that he won’t seek re-election to Congress next year.
Kinzinger, in a nearly five minute video marking the end of his 12-year House career, recalled his first campaign and a promise he made. “I also remember during that campaign saying that if I ever thought it was time to move on from Congress, I would, and that time is now,” he said.
Kinzinger would have been up for reelection in 2022. He will finish the remainder of his term that ends on Jan. 3, 2023.
The Illinois Republican hinted at other political plans in the video, which he posted on Twitter with the caption “Looking forward to the next chapter!”
“I cannot focus on both a reelection to Congress and a broader fight nationwide. I want to make it clear — this isn’t the end of my political future, but the beginning.”
His announcement comes after the Illinois’ state Legislature passed a congressional map that drew him into the same district with another GOP incumbent, Rep. Darin LaHood. This would have set up a primary matchup between Kizinger and Lahood, a vocal Trump ally in the House.
Kinzinger previously hinted at the possibility of seeking another office in Illinois amid redistricting, potentially a statewide campaign for the governor’s office or Senate.
He told The Chicago Sun-Times in April that if he ends up “getting drawn out of a district and you have no opportunity to run again for the House and you want to stay involved, yeah, it makes, it makes frankly looking at the Senate or the governor a little more attractive.”
Kinzinger, a military veteran, became increasingly critical of his party after the deadly Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. He became one of ten House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump in January after attack, and is now the second member of that group to announce his retirement from Congress, joining Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
After breaking with Trump, Kinzinger was censured by the GOP and shunned by his own family, who said he was in cahoots with the “devil’s army.”
Republican rebukes of him rose after he accepted a position on the special House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot.
“We’ve allowed leaders to reach power selling the false premise that strength comes from degrading others and dehumanizing those that look, act or think differently than we do,” Kinzinger said in the Friday video.
“As a country, we’ve fallen for those lies, and now we face a poisoned country filled with outrage blinding our ability to reach real strength.”
