Sen. Jim DeMint speaks to the Values Voter Summit, sponsored by the Family Research Council, on Sept. 17, 2010, in Washington. With his hefty campaign account and staunch conservatism, Mr. DeMint has used the midterm elections to vault from first-term U.S. senator to rainmaker of the nation's tea party. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, arrives on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012, on Capitol Hill in Washington for a closed-door meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and others embassy staff were killed. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, is interviewed on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday, July 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Sens. Lindsey Graham (right) and Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republicans, prepare to watch the CBS News/National Journal foreign policy debate at the Benjamin Johnson Arena in Spartanburg, S.C., on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)
Sen. Jim DeMint (at the podium), accompanied by Sen. Rand Paul, addresses a tea party Continuing Revolution Rally on Thursday, March 31, 2011, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, speaks at a news conference on the budget on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday, March 17, 2011, as Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, listens. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)
** FILE ** Then-Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi (right) and U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, meet in Baghdad on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005. A delegation of visiting U.S. senators and representatives met with Mr. Allawi, though no statement was made to the media. (AP Photo/Karim Sahib, Pool)
U.S. Senator-elect Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, takes the stage with his wife, Debbie, on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004, at the Adams Mark Hotel in Columbia, S.C. Mr. DeMint defeated Democrat Inez Tenebaum. (AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain)
Rep. Jim DeMint hugs his wife, Debbie, as their daughter Donna looks on after Mr. DeMint won the U.S. Senate Republican primary runoff by defeating former Gov. David Beasley on Tuesday, June 22, 2004, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain)
Sen. Jim DeMint, a member of the Senate Banking Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, leads other Republican senators on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, in a call to bypass the July Fourth holiday recess to stay in town to work on the debt crisis. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Vice President Dick Cheney waves to the crowd with Rep. Jim DeMint (right), South Carolina Republican, at a fundraising dinner for Mr. DeMint's senatorial race at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center on Friday, July 23, 2004, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/Willis Glassgow)
Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican (AP Photo) more >Sen. Jim DeMint said Thursday he’ll resign from the Senate to go run the Heritage Foundation, the powerhouse conservative think tank that dominates Republican policy circles.
“It’s been an honor to serve the people of South Carolina in United States Senate for the past eight years, but now it’s time for me to pass the torch to someone else and take on a new role in the fight for America’s future,” Mr. DeMint said in a statement announcing the news.
He will step down from the Senate in January and will take over for Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner in April.
Mr. DeMint, a tea party favorite who became a major electoral force in the 2010 elections, helping promote tea party candidates in primaries against establishment GOP favorites, said he’s ready to shift to the policy arena.
He said he never intended for the Senate to be a career for him. He previously served six years in the House and won election to the Senate in 2004 and re-election in 2010.
His seat is safe for Republicans, with the GOP firmly in control of South Carolina’s political landscape and Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, able to pick his immediate successor.
Mr. Feulner, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation in the 1970s and has been its president since 1977, said Mr. DeMint is the right man to succeed him.
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Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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