Former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell says he won’t run for reelection in 2026, announcing his impending departure from the Senate on Thursday, his 83rd birthday.
Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor that he made the decision not to run again last year. McConnell said he’s never much liked calling attention to Feb. 20, but he figured his birthday is as good a day as any to make the announcement.
“Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell said. “Every day in between, I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business right here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”
McConnell has been a U.S. senator from Kentucky since 1985, and he announced one year ago that he would relinquish his leadership role in the Senate. He was the Senate Republican leader from 2007-2025 and is the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history. McConnell served as majority leader from 2015-2021.
The Kentucky Republican’s retirement from the Senate was widely expected.
McConnell, a polio survivor, has experienced health issues in recent years, including freezing episodes and falls. Those who have spent time around him recently said he’s experiencing some reemergence of polio symptoms that are known to afflict older survivors of the disease. He’s been in a wheelchair since a recent fall in the U.S. Capitol.
“I’ve never lost sight of the fact that without my mother’s devoted care, a childhood encounter with polio could have turned out a lot worse,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “And unless my father had taken a job in the Bluegrass State, my interest in politics might have run a course somewhere else. And if it weren’t for an 11th-hour outside-the-box idea on the campaign trail, my Senate career would have been over before it began. Or that if not for the people of Kentucky, time and again agreeing that leadership delivers, and elected me to send back here, it would have been someone else from somewhere taking that seat at the table where I’ve had a chance to work, strategize, fight and win.”
As Senate majority leader, McConnell wielded immense power, and was singularly responsible for the fast rate at which President Trump’s judicial nominees were confirmed during his first term. He was also famous for blocking the confirmation process after Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court under President Barack Obama, holding the seat open for a Trump nomination instead.
Still, McConnell diverged with Mr. Trump sometimes, drawing the president’s ire. He voted against several of Mr. Trump’s more divisive Cabinet nominees — Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — and was the sole Republican holdout against Gabbard and RFK Jr.
McConnell said some of his colleagues have left office with grave disappointment about the confines of the Senate, or the state of the institution. But McConnell offered a more optimistic outlook.
“Regardless of the political storms that may wash over this chamber, during the time I have remaining, I assure our colleagues that I will depart with great hope for the endurance, the endurance of the Senate as an institution,” he said. “There are any number of reasons for pessimism. But the strength of the Senate is not one of them. … The Senate is still equipped for work of great consequence. And to the disappointment of my critics, I’m still here on the job. I yield the floor.”
Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.
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