Senator John Cornyn today withdrew from contention to become the next director of the FBI, saying the best way he can serve the country is 'continuing to fight for a conservative agenda in the U.S. Senate,' News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Cornyn had been considered a front runner for the post vacated by the firing of James Comey last week, and he was interviewed by President Trump over the weekend.
"Now, more than ever, the country needs a well-credentialed, independent FBI Director," Cornyn said in a statement. "I have informed the Administration that I am committed to helping them find such an individual."
Cornyn was hardly a shoo-in for the post. Several key Republican Senators had expressed concern about a politician holding the FBI director's job, at a time when the Bureau was considered be highly politicized.
Cornyn's resignation would have triggered the third special election for a vacant U.S. Senate seat in Texas in 55 years, and both of them sparked major changes in the state's political makeup.
In 1961 when Lyndon Johnson resigned from the Senate to become JFK's Vice President, John Tower won the special election to succeed him, becoming the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since reconstruction.
In 1993, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen resigned to become President Clinton's Treasury Secretary. Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison won that special election, marking the start of essentially one party Republican rule in Texas.
Since a politician can run in a special election without giving up his or her current post, and because candidates run individually and not by party nomination, Democrats had seen a Cornyn resignation as a way to break the Republican cycle which began with the two special elections in 1961 and 1993.
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