Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat from South Florida, has announced that he will not seek a seventh term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and instead will become chief executive of the American Jewish Committee. Deutch is the 31st member of his party to step aside ahead of the midterm elections.

He told The Forward that he had been preparing for his new role his whole life, crediting his formative years at Camp Ramah with teaching him to stand up for Jewish issues, and his time as a Hillel leader in college fighting for Soviet Jews. “If I think about what I did as a kid and the experiences that I had as a young adult, it probably would have been easier to anticipate a position like the one I’m going to more than the one I’ve been in.”