Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Rules Committee, on Wednesday announced on the House floor that he is not running for reelection. Dreier has served in the House for more than three decades, but was left without a district to run in this year after an independent citizens commission redrew the state’s political boundaries.
Dreier is the seventh California congressman to do so, leaving the Golden State with much less seniority to fight for a shrinking pie of discretionary spending.
The impending retirement of Dreier, 59, had been one of Washington’s worst kept secrets as his fund-raising pace had lagged and he had few viable political paths forward.
On the House floor, he declared, “I am a proud institutionalist, and I believe that this institution is as great as it has ever been.”
Dreier first became chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, the gatekeeper of legislation that reaches the floor, in 1999. After a hiatus where Democrats took control of the Congress between 2007 and 2011, he reclaimed the gavel last year.
He pledged to spend his final year in office “working toward greater bipartisan progress. Our economy and our job market remain in peril, and the effort to rein in the deficit has only just begun.”
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