GOPer Weller Announcing Retirement
Congressman Jerry Weller (R-IL) will announce today that he is not seeking re-election, setting up a potentially close race for his swing seat — President Bush carried the district with 53% in 2004, and Weller won re-election with only 55% in 2006, despite not being targeted.
"I need to give my family the time needed to be a full-time father and husband," Weller will say, according to prepared remarks.
And on the subject of his family: Weller is married to Zury Ríos Montt, a member of the Guatemalan Congress from the Guatemalan Republican Front — a party founded by her father, Efraín Ríos Montt. The elder Ríos Montt is a former right-wing dictator who took power in a March 1982 military coup, combatted leftist guerrillas by employing brutal tactics against indigenous peoples — killing tens of thousands — and was himself forced from power in August 1983.













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