Longtime Arizona Rep. Kirkpatrick won't seek 2022 reelection

Five-term Arizona Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick has announced she won't run for reelection to the U.S. House in 2022.

The 70-year-old Kirkpatrick said Friday that serving Arizona residents was an “absolute honor and joy" but that it was time to “hand over the baton." Kirkpatrick also says she wants to spend more time with family, including her three grandsons. She first represented a district in northeastern Arizona for three terms and more recently, a southeastern Arizona district. Kirkpatrick ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2016. She was absent from Congress for six weeks in early 2020 for treatment of alcoholism after she was injured in a fall.