Sen. Kit Bond '60 won't seek re-election

U.S. Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond ’60 will not run for re-election in 2010, the 69-year-old senator said Thursday in an address before the Missouri General Assembly.

Bond, who was elected governor of Missouri when he was 33 years old, explained that his decision to retire from the Senate had to do with his age.

“In 1972, I became Missouri’s youngest governor. Ladies and gentlemen, I do not aspire to become Missouri’s oldest senator,” Bond said.

Though Bond will no longer be a senator, he said he does not intend to completely withdraw from the public sector. “I do not plan to retire because there are so many interesting and challenging things left to do. I am only retiring from elective office after the 2010 election,” he said.

Bond graduated cum laude with a degree from the Wilson School in 1960 and received a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1963. He first became governor in 1973 but lost his re-election bid in 1976 before being elected to a second term in 1980. Bond was elected senator in 1986 and was re-elected in 1992, 1998 and 2004. He currently serves as the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Bond is one of several Republican senators who have announced plans to leave the Senate: Both Florida’s senior senator, Mel Martinez, and Kansas’ senior senator, Sam Brownback, are not seeking re-election. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the Republican senior senator from Texas, has hinted that she may leave office in two years to run for the Texas governorship.

Bond’s retirement could lead to a more competitive Senate election in Missouri, a state in which Democrats have been making inroads and which President-elect Barack Obama lost by only a few thousand votes. Both Missouri’s junior senator, Claire McCaskill, and its governor-elect, Jay Nixon, who lost to Bond in the 1998 Senate race, are Democrats.

Potential candidates for Bond’s Senate seat include Rep. Roy Blunt and former Sen. Jim Talent, both Republicans, and Missouri secretary of state Robin Carnahan, a Democrat, according to politico.com.

Despite his wish to move in a “new direction,” Bond thanked the people of Missouri for their support in his address before the General Assembly and promised to continue to put in great effort in the Senate for the next two years.

“I thank the voters of Missouri who elected me to represent them. There is no greater honor,” he said. “I am truly blessed to have been entrusted by them with the responsibility of public office.”