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Sen. Al Jackson, R-Highland, officially resigned his seat in the Utah Legislature on Friday and is planning to move to Virginia for work and to be closer to his family.

Jackson was appointed to the Senate in 2014 to replace Sen. John Valentine, who left the post to become chairman of the Utah Tax Commission. He was the only African-American in the Senate.

Jackson, who had worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., said in his resignation letter that he was moving to be close to his aging parents and closer to his business, as well as to enable him to watch his son, Frank, play college basketball.

"Being able to watch him play basketball at Duke University is a dad's dream, which I will now be able to realize," Jackson said in his resignation letter to Senate President Wayne Niederhauser.

During his brief tenure, Jackson sponsored legislation protecting parents from being charged with a crime if their children are truant from school; seeking to make state school board races partisan contests; increasing the burden for the state to take custody of children from parents; and seeking to repeal the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which made it so voters elect U.S. senators, rather than having them selected by the state legislatures.

Jackson's resignation triggers a special election process in which the Republican delegates in Senate District 14 will meet to pick a replacement to serve out the remainder of the year. A date for that meeting has not been set.

Jackson had previously announced that he would not seek re-election this year. On Tuesday, Dan Hemmert defeated former state Rep. Morgan Philpot in a Republican primary. He will face Libertarian candidate Joe Buchman and Independent American Party nominee Curt Crosby in the November election. There is not a Democrat in the race.

The winner of that election will take over the Senate spot at the beginning of next year.

Twitter: @RobertGehrke