In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday, Rush said he arrived at his decision after a recent conversation with his 19-year-old grandson, Jonathan.
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"I don't want my grandchildren . . . to know me from a television news clip or something they read in a newspaper," Rush told the newspaper. "I want them to know me on an intimate level, know something about me, and I want to know something about them. I don't want to be a historical figure to my grandchildren."
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"We want to bring light, a bright light, to a dark history of our nation. And I think it's very timely and very important that we do it at this time," Rush told The Washington Post in an interview last year on his search for answers about Hampton's killing.
Rush is the 24th House Democrat to announce that he will not run for reelection this year. Although his district leans strongly Democratic, the House Republican campaign arm nonetheless argued that his retirement shows that Democrats "are abandoning ship as fast as possible because they know their majority is doomed."
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"If Democrats thought their retirement crisis would get better over the holidays, they were wrong," Mike Berg, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement.
"I am feeling fine and currently have no symptoms. . . . As COVID-19 cases rise and the Omicron variant spreads throughout the nation, I encourage everyone who has not yet done so to get vaccinated and get boosted as soon as possible," Rush said in a statement.
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