Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the powerful 14-term congressman who once chaired the House Committee on Homeland Security, announced Monday he will not seek reelection in 2020.

King, in a statement Monday, said his “prime reason” for retiring “was that after 28 years of spending four days a week in Washington, D.C., it is time to end the weekly commute and be home in Seaford.”

“This was not an easy decision. But there is a season for everything and Rosemary and I decided that, especially since we are both in good health, it is time to have the flexibility to spend more time with our children and grandchildren,” he said. “My daughter’s recent move to North Carolina certainly accelerated my thinking.”

The 75-year-old congressman said his decades in Congress have been “an extraordinary experience.”

King, a former chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, has cultivated a reputation for bipartisanship while maintaining a hard line on immigration and crime. He is the longest-serving Republican member of New York’s congressional delegation. Still, he won reelection in 2018 by just 6 percentage points.

King’s keen political instincts and deserved reputation as a fighter for New York’s interests gave him remarkable political resiliency; at one point, after the 2008 election that sent Barack Obama to the White House, he was the state’s lone GOP member of Congress.

He teamed up with powerful Democrats such as Chuck Schumer to win a huge Superstorm Sandy aid package after the 2012 storm, despite foot-dragging by GOP leaders. On Monday, the Senate Democratic leader took to Twitter to lavish praise on King.

“Peter King stood head & shoulders above everyone else,” Schumer wrote. “He’s fiercely loved America, Long Island, and his Irish heritage and left a lasting mark on all 3.”

His district includes once-reliably GOP territory in southwestern Suffolk County and a portion of Nassau County, about an hour’s drive east of Manhattan. It went narrowly for Trump in 2016.

Democrats seem certain to target the district in 2020. Many suburban districts around the country have been moving steadily toward Democrats as moderate, well-educated voters swing away from the polarizing president.

Twenty House Republicans have announced they will not seek reelection. Three other GOP lawmakers have resigned and already left Congress.

House Democrats retook the majority in 2018, and are looking to defend their majority and grab new seats in suburban districts in what they see as a backlash against Trump.

Only a handful of the Republican-held districts being vacated by retirements are expected to be seriously competitive next year. But King’s district will be one of them, underscoring GOP vulnerability in suburban areas, spotlighted last week as suburban voters in Virginia and Kentucky flocked to Democratic candidates in elections for state offices.

(AP)