Rep. Delahunt, D-Mass., won't run for re-election

WASHINGTON – Massachusetts Rep. William Delahunt will not run for re-election, the seven-term Democrat said Thursday night, a decision he said was not politically motivated as he faces criticism for his handling of a 1986 shooting by a University of Alabama professor accused of killing three colleagues last month.

"The decision had nothing to do with politics," Delahunt said in a statement. "I've been wrestling with this decision for a while."

Delahunt had been considering leaving Congress for several years but was talked out of it by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who urged him to help pass President Barack Obama's first-term agenda.

Delahunt has come under fire in Massachusetts recently for his handling of the 1986 shooting in which Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama professor, killed her brother. At the time, Delahunt was the local district attorney and he accepted the findings of the local and state police that Bishop's shooting of her brother was accidental.

The retirement creates a rare open congressional seat in Massachusetts. All the House members from Massachusetts are Democrats.

The fact that Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown won almost 60 percent of the vote in Delahunt's congressional district, which includes Cape Cod and the South Shore, during a special election to succeed Kennedy also might have encouraged the Democrat to retire, said Republican State Rep. Jeffrey Davis Perry, who had already launched a campaign to run against Delahunt before Thursday's announcement.

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