Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Gabrielle Giffords To Resign From Congress

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona’s first Jewish congresswoman, will resign later this week to focus on her rehabilitation, the Tucson Democrat said Sunday.

Giffords’ announcement came just over a year after she was shot in the head in a Tucson supermarket parking lot, where she had been meeting with constituents. Jared Lee Loughner, a mentally ill 23-year-old, has been charged in the shooting, which killed six people and injured 14.

“I have more work to do on my recovery, so to do what’s best for Arizona, I will step down this week,” Giffords said in a video statement posted on her congressional website.

In the two-minute video, she also thanks Americans for their well wishes, says she’s in good spirits as she continues to recover and that she “will return and we will work together for Arizona and this great country.”

Giffords, a former state legislator who was elected to Congress in 2006, is the daughter of a Jewish father and a Christian Scientist mother. A 2001 trip to Israel strengthened her connection to her Jewish roots, she has said. Giffords is a member of Tucson’s Congregation Chaverim, and studied Torah alongside Rabbi Stephanie Aaron, the synagogue’s spiritual leader. In 2007, Aaron officiated at Giffords “traditional Jewish wedding” to astronaut Mark Kelly.

The congresswoman is undergoing intensive rehabilitation in Houston, where she has been living with Kelly.

Under Arizona law, Gov. Jan Brewer has 72 hours from the time of Giffords resignation to set a date for a special election. The winner will serve out the remainder of Giffords’ term, which ends in January 2013.

Giffords is expected this week in Washington, where she is to attend President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Watch Giffords’ announcement below:

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.