The Buck stops here: Colorado Republican Ken Buck said Wednesday he will not seek reelection in 2024, and he harshly criticized members of his party for “lying to America” about the 2020 presidential election and the riot at the Capitol that followed it.
Buck, 64, announced his decision during an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in which he discussed the speakership fight that left the House rudderless and Republicans at one another’s throats for most of the past month.
Buck played an instrumental part in that chaos as one of the eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to boot Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s office. He then opposed Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio in their bids for the gavel, citing their votes against certifying the 2020 election. But he ultimately voted for the new speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who also voted against certification and filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit that sought to set aside Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, which Buck himself co-signed.
