Maine’s Sen. Snowe Retires

Battered and beaten by the harsh world of Capitol Hill politics, Olympia Snowe, the well-known moderate senator from Maine, announced Tuesday that she wouldn’t seek reelection. Snowe, 65, made sure to note that she was in good health and felt physically up to running this fall but claimed that the partisanship in Washington had finally gotten under her skin. “Unfortunately, I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term,” she said in a statement. “So at this stage of my tenure in public service, I have concluded that I am not prepared to commit myself to an additional six years in the Senate.” Snowe was set to run for her fourth term in office this fall.