Centrist Rep. Don Bacon is done with Congress — but keeping the door open on a presidential bid

Washington – The centrist representative Don Bacon, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the Chamber, said this week that he did not have the “hunger” of another exhausting re -election campaign and would not appear for a sixth term next year.

But Bacon, who spent 30 years in the Air Force and specialized in intelligence issues, said he wanted to play an executive role along the way and would not run for the governor of Nebraska, or even the president in 2028.

“I was asked the other day:” You say that you are interested in being a framework – Is it the governor or the president? ” I’m going, “yes,” said Bacon in an interview in his office. “If there is an opportunity and I can make a difference, a unique difference, I would like to continue serving. I just don’t want to do two -year elections.”

Bacon, 61, admitted that it would be incredibly difficult to run for the White House as a current or ancient member of the Chamber – James Garfield succeeded in 1880. And Bacon said that he was not sure that his republicanism brand – a resanism and a muscle vision of foreign policy – can never make a complete return in the party, although he said he would continue to do so.

“I don’t think it would be very easily done,” he said. “All I know is that I have a heart to serve our country, and I have a vision.”

The Secretary of Defense is another option “If God opens this door,” he said, although he is not sure that a republican president appoints him. He said he would not run against the outgoing governor of Nebraska, Jim Pillen, a republican colleague and close friend who took office in 2023.

The Congress Bacon retirement is notable because he is one of the few Republicans sitting at Capitol Hill who were willing to publicly criticize President Donald Trump, who has the reputation of retalling against his enemies and ending their political careers. Bacon’s announcement one day after another Republican who clashed with Trump, Senator Thom Tillis from North Carolina, said he would not ask for his re -election in 2026.

The pair of pensions came while Tillis and Bacon were preparing to vote on the gigantic domestic policy package of Trump – which the president calls his “big bill” – because the two legislators expressed concerns concerning the discounts of Medicaid in the package. Tillis voted against this; Bacon voted for this.

But in the interview, Bacon insisted that neither the public quarrels with Trump nor the violent threats, he and his wife had had any impact on his decision to leave the congress.

Elected for the first time alongside Trump in 2016, Bacon represents a swing district which includes Omaha and rural areas to the west; In 2024, Democrat Kamala Harris beat Trump in the 4.6 percentage points, while Bacon prevailed against her Democrat Challenger, Tony Vargas, from 50.9% to 49.1%.

Bacon deplored that running in a difficult battlefield district every two years was an exhausting business, and that he did not have “fire in my belly” to win a sixth race.

“This work requires a day of 14 hours during the week, Saturdays, parades and a variety of things, and sometimes Sunday. And I want to do this for two more years? I just were not hungry to want to work at this intensity,” said Bacon, who has a large pork figurine sitting on his desk. “And my wife wanted me to go home. I went to DC four days a week, and I am lucky to be at home now seven days a week, and I have eight grandchildren in the 10 minutes of my house. ”

Bacon said he thought he could have been re-elected if he had run, even if the party who controls the White House generally loses seats at home during the first mid-term elections of a president. In addition to that, the Democrats dirty on the occasion of attacking the Republicans for having voted for the “great and beautiful bill” of Trump, which reduces the advantages of Medicaid which are essential to districts like Bacon.

A rural hospital in Nebraska said Thursday that it would close in the coming months due to imminent MEDICAIDI Cups. Bacon argued that the legislation had not yet taken effect and that it included $ 50 billion for rural hospitals. He said he had to weigh the advantages and disadvantages in the bill; He decided that prolonging Trump 2017 tax reductions and stimulating military and border funding prevailed over any negative impact.

“There are things I want to be better,” he said. “But will I vote to increase taxes on middle class Americans? I am not.”

On the day of the interview, NBC News and other points of sale reported that the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, had ordered a break in sending an expedition of missiles and ammunition to Ukraine in the midst of concerns concerning stocks of the American army. Bacon, who has a photograph on the wall of him, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has always criticized Trump management of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and his “appeasement” of Putin.

The one who ordered the break in arms must be dismissed, said Bacon.