Republican U.S. Representative Ken Buck will leave Congress on March 22, who represents Colorado’s 4th Congressional District announced Tuesday in a surprise decision. This will leave Republicans with further narrowing the GOP’s majority in the chamber.
“Today, I am announcing I will depart Congress at the end of next week. I look forward to staying involved in our political process, as well as spending more time in Colorado and with my family,” Buck said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.
Buck said the House has become ‘dysfunctional’ in an interview on CNN following his announcement and that Congress has “just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.”
“It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress and having talked to former members, it is the worst year in 40-50 years to be in Congress,” he added.
Buck’s departure will cut the House Republican margin to 218 seats over 213 for Democrats, with three vacancies. With that breakdown, Speaker Mike Johnson could only afford to lose two votes to pass legislation on a party-line vote.
Speaking to reporters shortly after the news broke, Johnson suggested he did not get a heads-up from Buck.
“I was surprised by Ken’s announcement. I’m looking forward to talking with him about that,” the speaker said.
Though later Tuesday, Buck said he did, in fact, inform Johnson he was leaving.
Buck, a former prosecutor with the Department of Justice, was first elected to Congress in 2014. Buck announced in November 2023 that he would not seek reelection for the sixth House term, stating that his party’s “insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans’ confidence in the rule of law.