Minnesota Senator Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, says she’d been considering not running for reelection for some time, but not because of the current political situation.

“To be able to have more balance in my life was really the factor,” Smith said in an interview recorded for “At Issue with Tom Hauser” to air Sunday morning. “It was a very personal decision and it honestly had nothing to do with the politics of the moment. It’s not lost on me that we’re in a really crucial moment in our country right now.”

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Smith says the fact Democrats are no longer in control of the U.S. Senate was not a factor. “It’s not as if there was a moment if Democrats are in the majority in the Senate I would stay,” she says. “And so it really wasn’t a factor at all. I would say, though, that I feel this moment we are in in our country is an incredibly scary moment. It’s probably why over 80,000 Minnesotans have called my office in the last two weeks expressing their fear and worry about what’s happening with funding cuts and Elon Musk and all the rest of it.”

Smith says she’s alarmed by what is happening under President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“There’s always ways and needs to make government work better for people,” she said when asked if she agrees steps need to be taken to make government more efficient and accountable. “You probably remember when I was chief of staff to Governor Dayton and then lieutenant governor, this was one of my key initiatives to improve the way Minnesota government works so that it can deliver better services for Minnesotans. So absolutely. But what these folks are doing is, as you say, sort of taking a sledgehammer approach and, in so doing, overriding the will of the people through their elected representatives and that I think is wrong and illegal.”

Smith says she’ll work to preserve as many services for Minnesotans as she can in her two remaining years in office.