The Senate’s longest serving Republican is thinking about running for another term.

Utah Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, a member of the Senate since 1977 and its president pro tempore, said after Wednesday’s leadership elections that he was getting significant pressure to seek an eighth term.

Hatch, 82, had previously said he would retire at the end of his current term, in two years time.

“I’ve got a lot of people asking me to. A lot of my colleagues are asking me to, a lot of people in Utah are asking me to,” Hatch said. “You know that I had said that … this would be my last term, but circumstances have greatly changed, so I’ll have to look at it.”

The prospect of Republicans controlling the White House and the House and Senate is an appealing prospect for the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy and entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.