Secretary of State Mike Pompeo apparently won’t be jumping ship to Kansas anytime soon. Following a long period of speculation that Pompeo would leave his role at State to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by current Senator Pat Roberts, the secretary of State officially informed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Monday that he’ll be staying in the Executive Branch after all. “Leader McConnell spoke with Secretary Pompeo this afternoon where he indicated he will not be running for Senate,” a source close to McConnell told the Washington Post. “Leader McConnell believes Secretary Pompeo is doing an incredible job as Secretary of State and is exactly where the country needs him right now.”
Pompeo’s potential Senate bid had reportedly long been in consideration, with President Donald Trump even starting to draw up a list of potential replacements for secretary of State. But the top diplomat’s thinking apparently changed after Trump’s recent decision to take down Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani, which was reportedly done at Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence‘s urging. The New York Times reports that Pompeo began telling party officials that his plans had changed in the wake of Soleimani’s killing, and the Post notes that after initially giving Pompeo’s Senate run his blessing, Trump now wants Pompeo to stay on at State, particularly as the situation in Iran continues to heat up. “He loves doing the job he’s doing right now and feels that things are too volatile with the various situations around the world, particularly with Iran and Iraq, and he wants to make sure he’s in the best spot to serve his country,” a source close to Pompeo told the Wall Street Journal. “He believes that is secretary of state.”
Pompeo’s decision to stay in place makes sense, of course, given that the power and influence that Pompeo can wield in his position greatly outsizes whatever impact he could make as one member of the 100-person U.S. Senate. It also avoids the optics that Pompeo is jumping ship as the Trump administration embroils the U.S. in what could become an extended military conflict with Iran, while avoiding a change in leadership during what will likely be a crucial moment for U.S. foreign relations. But the decision not to subject himself to a Senate run could also be a way for Pompeo to give himself some political cover, given his outsized role in both the Iran conflict and the Trump administration’s Ukraine dealings at the heart of impeachment. Though Pompeo still remains popular in conservative-leaning Kansas, where he’d be running, the move to stay in place rather than risk an election could shield him from the effects of political scrutiny, should the U.S. get into an unpopular war with Iran or any potential wrongdoing on Pompeo’s part in Ukraine come out during Trump’s Senate trial.
While the decision to stay in place may be good for Pompeo, though, it’s not great for the Republican Party, whose chances of holding on to their Senate seat in Kansas may now be at risk. With Pompeo’s candidacy off the table, the most likely Republican to earn the party’s nomination now appears to be former Kansas Secretary of State and dedicated Trump ally Kris Kobach. Kobach—who’s perhaps best known for his baseless crusade against the largely nonexistent issue of voter fraud, and in 2018 broke so many court rules that a judge ordered him to go back to law school—is popular among far-right Republican primary voters, but is distinctly unpopular with Kansas moderates and independents. Kobach lost Kansas’s gubernatorial race to a Democrat in 2018, and, per the Times, Republican leaders reportedly don’t have much higher hopes for his Senate run, believing that his candidacy could make it hard for the GOP to hold on to the seat in 2020.