Powerful GOP chairman has no plans to endorse Trump

The Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton, said that he doesn’t plan to endorse presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. 

“I’m gonna stay in my lane,” the Michigan lawmaker told a local radio station earlier this week, according to The Detroit News. “There is a lot of things that folks  are not happy about with either of these two candidates. We’re running our own race. Don’t look for me to endorse anyone in this race probably the rest of the year.”

{mosads}During the interview, Upton also said a lot of people are unhappy with the race.

“We’ve got a long ways to go, but it seems to a lot of us that the train is off the track,” Upton said. “We’ll see if he’s able to put it back on the track, I don’t know, but not a lot of happy campers in terms of how this race is proceeding so far.”

Upton, who is running for reelection, easily held onto his seat in 2014, despite seeing a super-PAC backed by a number of tech donors spend $2 million against him. His seat is seen as safe this time around again.

Though a number of prominent Republicans, including Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.), have backed Trump’s campaign, Upton’s remarks add to the growing criticism of the presumptive presidential nominee’s policies and comments.  

If prominent Republicans in Congress stay on the sidelines, it would be a stark difference from 2012. The Hill found only three GOP members in the last presidential cycle who didn’t back Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.