Jacobs represents the 27th district of Congress, but had been considering an offer for the new seat of the 23rd district of Congress. The Buffalo area congressman announced support for these stricter gun measures came after 10 people were killed in a racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket last month.
“Despite this reaction, I really think I could win this election, but it would be an incredibly divisive election for both the Republican Party and the people of District 23, many of whom I have never represented,” he said Friday. “The last thing we need is an incredibly negative and truthful media attack, funded by millions of dollars of special interest money coming to our community around this issue of guns and violence and control of ‘weapons’.
New York’s 23rd Congressional District strongly favors Republicans. Jacobs, who won a special election in 2020, said that although he will not run in the new congressional district, he will end his “time as a 27th (district) member of Congress” until the end of the year.
The New York congressman is the 20th Republican in the House to leave Congress at the end of his term. He is the 18th Republican to announce that he would retire or run for office; GOP representatives Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and David McKinley of West Virginia lost the primary election.
So far, 32 House Democrats are leaving Congress at the end of their term.
This story is being broken and will be updated.
CNN’s Melissa DePalo contributed to this report.