LANSING —Outgoing Michigan GOP party chairman Ron Weiser has announced he is not seeking re-election to another two-year term, after sharing that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“I ask you for your prayers as I fight the prostate cancer that has invaded me,” Weiser said according to a report from the Detroit News at his final state convention on Saturday.

“Thank you for your advocacy, your passion. Keep fighting. I’ll be right there fighting with you.”

State legislator Laura Cox of Livonia was chosen at the convention to replace the outgoing GOP leader, and will lead the party into 2020’s elections.

Weiser is a longtime political strategist who replaced former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in 2017. He has served on the University of Michigan Board of Regents since 2016 and will continue serving until 2025 according to the report.

“We did everything we could despite a very significant headwind blowing against Republicans,” Weiser said.

Republicans still maintain the majority in Michigan’s House and Senate, a testament to Weiser’s success in the role.

Weiser will now move on to work on the re-election campaign of Susan Collins, a U.S. senator from main, as the financial chair for the state House Republican Campaign Committee.

“Ron never retires,” McDaniel said about Weiser. “He gives everything to all that he does.”

Weiser hails from Ann Arbor and received his bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Michigan in 1996. He founded McKinley Associates Inc., a national real estate investment company, in 1968 and was its chairman and chief executive officer until 2001. From 2001 to 2005 he served as a U.S. Ambassador to the Slovak Republic under then-president George W. Bush.

He and his wife Eileen also founded two educational institutes at UM: the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia.