ST. PAUL, Minn. - State Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch has announced she is resigning her leadership position and not running for re-election.
"I think it's time. I'm looking for other opportunities, and my family is always near me. And they've been extremely important to me," Koch told KARE 11 in an interview Thursday evening.
Koch, a Republican who represents Senate District 19 in Wright County, made the announcement Thursday afternoon.
In her resignation letter, Koch called 2011 a "challenging, exciting and exhausting year." In the past she has said her role in long, drawn out budget talks at the State Capitol have kept her away from her daughter for days at a time.
During her interview with KARE 11, Koch suggested her daughter and her mother -- who is battling breast cancer -- both played a role in her decision.
She also said she was not pressured to leave by anyone in her caucus. And she said her departure has nothing to do with the state party's tumoil this month, including the departure of the state GOP chairman, Tony Sutton.
"What I would say about our caucus is, we're strong, the bench is deep and I have full confidence that we're going to have an even better majority leader coming in for this next session," she said.
Koch will serve the remainder of her term, which includes the upcoming 2012 legislative session.
In 2010 Koch became the first woman to hold the top spot in the State Senate, the chair of the Rules Committee, which is commonly known as Majority Leader.
Senator Koch has been engaged in private negotiations over a proposed Vikings stadium, but has firmly opposed any general tax dollars going to subsidize a stadium.
Koch and House Speaker Kurt Zellers, a fellow Republican, both urged Governor Mark Dayton to hold off holding a special session on the stadium until after the plan is narrowed down and the all the options are thoroughly vetted.
Koch, who has volunteered on Republican campaigns since the 1990s, was first elected to the Senate in 2006. She led the effort to recruit Republican senate candidates for the 2010 election, which led to the GOP taking control of the Minnesota Senate for the first time since the body became formally divided along partisan lines in 1972.
Sen. Koch, as a lawmaker and as Majority Leader, has opposed any efforts to raise income taxes. She also opposed the transportation bill that led to Minnesota's first fuel tax hike in 20 years after Democratic majorities overrode Gov. Pawlenty's veto.
As a member of the Energy committee, Koch has supported lifting the ban on new nuclear power plants in the state. One of the state's two nuclear power plants, Xcel's Monticello Energy Center, is located in Koch's district.
In 1992, the Buffalo native enlisted in the Air Force, where she worked as a Russian linguistics expert. At one point in her four-year military career Koch was assigned to the National Security Agency in Washington DC. She met her husband Christopher in the military. They have one daughter, Rachel.
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