WASHINGTON-Michigan’s guitar-playing Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter announced his resignation Friday, invoking Bob Dylan in a statement as he gave up his congressional seat after a tumultuous year.
“I must ‘strike another match, go start anew,'” McCotter said in a statement.
McCotter, 46, launched a long-shot bid for the White House but then failed to qualify to run for re-election to the House seat he has represented in the Southeast Detroit area for the past decade.
McCotter attempted a write-in campaign to get on the ballot, but he abandoned that in the spring – days after the Michigan attorney general started an investigation into possible fraudulent nominating petitions filed on his behalf. McCotter had requested the investigation and said Friday he would continue to help with it.
The “recent event’s totality of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family,” McCotter said.
Among the more accomplished guitar players in Congress, McCotter acknowledged that he had no job on the horizon as he announced a decision that took many in Washington by surprise.
“I do not leave for an existing job and face diminishing prospects (and am both unwilling and ill-suited to lobby),” McCotter wrote. “My priorities are twofold: find gainful employment to help provide for my family; and continue to assist, in any way they see fit, the Michigan attorney general’s earnest and thorough investigation, which I requested, into the 2012 petition filing.”
McCotter tweeted earlier that his remaining political funds would be donated to a children’s research hospital.
The seat had been expected to remain in the GOP column this fall until the events of the past several months unfolded, presenting Democrats with a possible opportunity to pick up the long-held Republican seat.
McCotter’s office will remain open under the House clerk, as is usually the case when there is a sudden vacancy.