CHICAGO — Sen. Peter Fitzgerald announced Tuesday he will not seek a second term, leaving stunned Republicans scrambling for a candidate in a crucial 2004 race.
The senator said he was concerned about the time he would have to spend away from his wife, his 10-year-old son and his job to campaign.
Fitzgerald faced a tough race in Illinois, where voters swept Democrats into statewide office last year as most of the rest of the country leaned Republican.
Fitzgerald's decision leaves Republicans with an open seat in a state key to their hopes of keeping a Senate majority and of re-electing President Bush. Democrat Al Gore handily beat Bush in Illinois in 2000.
Illinois Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, who heads the state GOP, said she had not spoken to Fitzgerald but had started thinking about his successor.
"I've talked to the White House this morning, and we are going to work together to find the best and strongest candidate available," Topinka said. "That will take a little bit of time. I don't think anybody was prepared for this."
Political strategists in both parties had viewed Fitzgerald as the most vulnerable Senate Republican up for re-election next year. He angered the party faithful by criticizing Illinois Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and by doing little to bring federal projects home.
Even so, Democrats welcomed the news.
"This is a huge, huge blow to Republican prospects in Illinois and certainly beyond Illinois," said Brad Woodhouse, press secretary for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Woodhouse said Fitzgerald, heir to a banking fortune, would have funded his own race, making his departure worse for the party than a typical retirement.
A little-known state senator in 1998, Fitzgerald spent millions of his own money to upset the GOP establishment's candidate before narrowly defeating Democrat Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.