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Anonymous ID: 0f40e4 Jan. 18, 2019, 11:38 a.m. No.4807948   🗄️.is đź”—kun

Pompeo planning to meet with Pat Roberts amid 2020 Senate speculation: report

 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is planning to meet with Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) amid speculation that the Trump administration’s top diplomat could run to replace the retiring senator.

 

McClatchy reported the plans on Friday, though there’s no set timeline for a meeting.

 

The Hill has reached out to the State Department and Roberts's office for comment.

 

The report comes amid an increasingly aggressive effort by Senate Republicans to recruit Pompeo to run for Roberts’s seat in 2020.

 

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has personally urged Pompeo to leave the State Department to run for the seat, even directly broaching the subject in a recent phone call.

 

Before joining the Trump administration as CIA director in 2017, Pompeo, 55, served as a congressman from Kansas’s 4th District. President Trump named Pompeo secretary of State last year after firing his former top diplomat, Rex Tillerson.

 

Roberts, who’s currently in his fourth term in the Senate, announced earlier this month that he would not seek reelection in 2020. Since then, Republican leaders have eyed Pompeo as a top choice to succeed the 82-year-old Roberts.

 

Democrats, fresh off a wave election in November that handed them control of the House, are hoping to regain a majority in the Senate in 2020, when nearly two dozen Republican incumbents will face reelection.

 

But winning Kansas is not likely to be easy for Democrats. The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, currently puts the 2020 Senate race in the state in the “likely Republican” column.

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/426049-pompeo-planning-to-meet-with-pat-roberts-amid-2020-senate-speculation