Despite his campaign committee owning the rights to garrettforgovernor.com until the end of 2017, Sen. Tom Garrett vowed he will not seek the commonwealth’s highest office in the next election.
Garrett, R-Buckingham, who is running for Congress, said in an interview he was gearing up for a gubernatorial run when U.S. Rep. Robert Hurt said he would not seek reelection to the 5th Congressional District.
“Unequivocally and without a doubt, if we’re not successful, which we will be, we’re not doing that,” Garrett said, referring to his ongoing congressional run and now abandoned run for governor, respectively.
“I will not be a perennial candidate, I just won’t. God bless the people who do, that’s not what I want to be,” Garrett said.
According to the website domain name registrar GoDaddy, Garrett’s Chief of Staff Kevin Reynolds purchased the domain name garrettforgovernor.com on Dec. 15 for the Garrett senatorial campaign committee.
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Garrett, a former prosecutor, is on his second term representing state Senate District 22, which includes Appomattox and Amherst counties and part of Lynchburg.
Several times during his legislative career, Garrett has proposed an amendment to the Virginia Constitution to allow the governor more than one elected term.
The campaign committee will own the domain name until December 2017, a month after a new governor is elected.
Those running for governor of Virginia are Ed Gillespie, former Republican National Party Committee chairman and failed senatorial candidate; Corey Stewart, GOP candidate Donald Trump’s Virginia chair and Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman; and U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman.
On Dec. 23, Garrett sprinted into the race for Congress shortly after Hurt’s official announcement he would not seek reelection.
Garrett said he learned Hurt resigned from “people who learned from Sabato and the Daily Caller,” referring to Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
The campaign quickly pivoted from running for governor to Congress, Garrett said.
“We’d already started building a team,” Garrett said. “Look, God’s given me some ability to make a difference in this world. When they shovel the dirt on me at the end of the day, I want to know I’ve made all the positive difference I can make.”
Reynolds, his chief of staff, said Friday they had been prepared for Senate primary and general-election challengers that never came ahead of Garrett’s reelection in November, adding that each campaign would have been different.
“We had bullets in the chamber,” Reynolds said. “We had lots of bullets in the chamber.”
Contact Alex Rohr at arohr@newsadvance.com. Find him on Twitter: @arohr_reporter.