Senator Ron Johnson announces he will run for a third term

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has announced he will seek reelection for a third term this year, despite a previous pledge to retire, saying he believes “the country is in too much peril” for him to leave after his second term.

Johnson told The Wall Street Journal that he had not anticipated that Democrats would take over the government in 2020. “As I have told crowds since my first Tea Party speeches in 2010: This is a fight for freedom. This is not someone else’s fight, this is our fight, and it’s a fight we absolutely must win,” Johnson wrote.

“I believe America is in peril. Much as I’d like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don’t feel I should.” He added that “countless people” have encouraged him to run.

“During the 2016 campaign, I said it would be my last campaign and final term. That was my strong preference, and my wife’s-we both looked forward to a normal private life. Neither of us anticipated the Democrats’ complete takeover of government and the disastrous policies they have already inflicted on America and the world, to say nothing of those they threaten to enact in the future,” he wrote in the Journal.

Johnson won his first term in 2010 running as a Tea Party candidate and defeating incumbent Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat, by nearly 5 percentage points. He beat Feingold again in 2016 by just over 3 percentage points. 

Johnson made it official a day after Sen. John Thune (R-SD) said he would seek a fourth term. “I’ve always promised that I would do the work, even when it was hard, uncomfortable or unpopular. That work continues,” ​Johnson said on Saturday.