Thaddeus McCotter (Lon Horwedel/AP)
Michigan Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, who launched a short-lived White House bid in 2011, announced Friday that he was resigning from Congress, citing personal family issues.
"After nearly 26 years in elected office, this past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family," McCotter said in a statement. "As this harmony is required to serve, its absence requires I leave."
In March, McCotter failed to acquire the necessary amount of signatures to appear on the party's primary ballot to represent his district near Detroit. He initially launched a write-in campaign, but announced last month he would end his efforts, choosing instead to retire from Congress when his term ended in January 2013.
He was first elected in 2002.
Here's the full statement of his resignation, which McCotter posted on his Facebook page Friday afternoon:
"Today I have resigned from the office of United States Representative for Michigan's 11th Congressional District.
After nearly 26 years in elected office, this past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family. As this harmony is required to serve, its absence requires I leave.
The recent event's totality of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family. Thus, acutely aware one cannot rebuild their hearth of home amongst the ruins of their U.S. House office, for the sake of my loved ones I must "strike another match, go start anew" by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen.
I do not leave for an existing job and face diminishing prospects (and am both unwilling and ill-suited to lobby), 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.
While our family takes this step into the rest of our lives, we do so with the ultimate confidence in our country's future. True, as at other times in the life of our nation, we live in an Age of Extremes that prizes intensity over sanity; rhetoric over reality; and destruction over creation. But this too shall pass, thanks to the infinite, inspired wisdom of the sovereign people who, with God's continued blessings, will again affirm for the generations American Exceptionalism.
Truly, it is a challenging and fortunate time to live in our blessed sanctuary of liberty.
In closing, to The People of Michigan's 11th Congressional District, I can but say this: Thank you for the privilege of having worked for you."
~ Thaddeus G. McCotter