Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, will resign from the Senate at the end of the year due to health problems, creating a new vacancy that may have the potential to swing the balance of the chamber in 2020.
Isakson, 74, was elected to his third term in the Senate in 2016 and would not have been up for re-election until 2022.
In a statement, Isakson said he was leaving because his Parkinson’s disease — a diagnosis that he shared publicly in 2015 — “has been progressing.” He also shared that he had surgery this week to have “growth” on his kidney — a renal cell carcinoma — removed and that he had suffered four fractured ribs and a torn rotator cuff after a fall last month.
“With the mounting health challenges I am facing, I have concluded that I will not be able to do the job over the long term in the manner the citizens of Georgia deserve,” Isakson said in a statement. “It goes against every fiber of my being to leave in the middle of my Senate term, but I know it’s the right thing to do on behalf of my state.”
“I am leaving a job I love because my health challenges are taking their toll on me, my family and my staff,” Isakson, the chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said.
His decision is likely to produce a political scramble in a state that has become less Republican.
While he won re-election in 2016 55 percent to 41 percent, Democrats have increasingly targeted Georgia in an effort to turn the state blue.
State and national Democrats could end up setting their sights once more on Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic nominee for Georgia governor. She had been considered as a top candidate to take on Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., next year, but said in April that she had no plans to run for U.S. Senate in the state in 2020.
Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives who rose to national prominence during her gubernatorial run, narrowly lost that race to then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
Abrams, who had also been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate or vice presidential nominee possibility, ruled out a 2020 White House bid earlier this month.
