Rep. John Curtis officially running for Romney’s senate seat

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s 3rd District Rep. John Curtis is officially running for U.S. Senate, hoping to fill the upcoming empty seat that Sen. Mitt Romney is leaving.

On Tuesday, Curtis told KSL TV that one of the reasons he is running for the Senate is because he believes he can take his work from the House of Representatives, specifically on energy and climate, and have a bigger platform.

“I think part of my aha moment was I can do all of those and actually have a bigger platform and accomplish more,” Curtis said.

Curtis first teased that he would be running for the seat in late September, saying he was very seriously considering the seat, but four days later penned an op-ed in which he said that leaving his district would be “leaving commitments unfulfilled.” He even went so far as to say he intended to run for his House seat again.

“The second I made the announcement that I was not going to run, I started to have people reach out to me asking me to reconsider,” Curtis said. “The very people who had made that commitment to were a lot of those voices who said, you can actually serve us better in the Senate than you can in the House. And so without that, I don’t I don’t think I could have changed my mind.”

Read the full story from KSL TV.