Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater announced he is not running for U.S. Senate.

Here’s the statement he posted on Facebook around noon:

“Friends, for asking and encouraging us to run as your candidate for the US Senate, thank you. Together we share an inspired vision for the future of America that is rooted in the founding documents of our country. Conservative principles of limited government that honors the talent, hard work and sacrifice of every American to pursue their dreams and create a purposeful life for themselves and their family. We also share a deep concern over the direction of our country and with those who believe that more taxes, more spending and more debt to fund bigger, intrusive and centralized government to plan and pamper our lives is destroying the American Character. We must fight for the future of our country. The time is now and the battleground is Florida.

Carole and I and our entire family traveled with you across Florida for sixteen months to ask for and receive your confidence and the high honor of serving as your Chief Financial Officer. For just over a year now we have been at the task of reducing your taxes, reducing your debt and creating an environment for Floridians to succeed on the paths they have chosen. Only slightly a year into this role I continue to feel blessed to be serving as your financial watchdog of government spending and I see so many more ways that I can serve you in this present capacity. As much as Carole and I are humbled by your calls, notes and messages to enter the US Senate race and carry our banner into the fight we believe we have a responsibility to finish the job Floridians elected us to do.

I promise you this, I will be with you and I will work at your side between now and November to see that Florida elects a United States Senator committed to our founding principles of freedom and liberty which has produced a prosperity never before achieved on this planet and which has inspired people across the globe. Let us press onward and see that Florida does it’s part to preserve and advance this exceptional Constitutional Republic in the spirit of what Abraham Lincoln knew to be, ‘the last best hope on earth.’ Jeff”