Florida GOP Rep. In Democratic District Announces She Won’t Run For Re-Election

UNITED STATES - MAY 19: Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., leaves the House Republican Conference meeting at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Ca... UNITED STATES - MAY 19: Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., leaves the House Republican Conference meeting at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images) MORE LESS
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Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) said Sunday that she will not run for re-election in 2018, giving Democrats a chance to pick up a congressional seat in a district that Hillary Clinton won by a wide margin in 2016.

“There was no epiphany. There was no moment, nothing that has happened that I’ve said, “I’ve got to move on,’” Ros-Lehtinen said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “It was just a realization that I could keep getting elected — but it’s not about getting elected.”

“We just said, ‘It’s time to take a new step,’” she said.

According to the Miami Herald, Clinton won Florida’s 27th district — where Ros-Lehtinen won a close re-election race last November — by 20 points in the 2016 election.

Ros-Lehtinen said that President Donald Trump’s election was “not been part of the calculation of retiring.”

“I would be talking to you even if Hillary Clinton were president,” she told the Miami herald. “Though I don’t agree with many, if not most, positions of President Trump.”

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