3 House Members Announce Retirements

Three House members announced Monday they will retire next year. Two are leaving politics and the third, Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), said he’ll run for an open Senate seat.

The departures by Torricelli, Bill Brewster (D-Okla.) and Jack Fields (R-Texas) mean at least 27 seats, now held by 19 Democrats and eight Republicans, will be open in the November election.

The current House lineup is 235 Republicans, 197 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies.

Torricelli, 44, a seven-term congressman who has dated Bianca Jagger and tangled with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is seeking the seat Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) is giving up.

Fields, 43, became chairman of an important telecommunications panel when Republicans took over the House this year. He said tearfully at a Humble, Texas, press conference that he wants to participate in his children’s lives.

Brewster, 54, a pharmacist and cattle rancher from Marietta, Okla., said he would rejoin the private sector. “I’ve always been a businessman at heart,” he said at an appearance in Ardmore, Okla.

Torricelli kicked off his Senate campaign Monday at a Franklin Lakes, N.J., elementary school. His audience of sixth-graders was distracted, however, when one of them threw up during his speech.