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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – When Ben Sasse Heard that GOP activists in Nebraska were ready to blame him for his insufficient support for Donald Trump, the Republican senator did not try to talk to them about it. Instead, he hit first.
In a five minute video posted to Facebook and YouTube, Sasse tore up his fellow Republicans for following a “cult of personality” and “acting like politics is religion.”
It’s the no-apologies approach that Nebraskans have come to expect – and even appreciate – from their young senator, who perhaps more than any other rising Republican leader cultivates anti-Trumpism as his trademark.
Sasse said Trump’s election fraud allegations were “lies” and that Trump “shook a mob that attacked Capitol Hill” on January 6, when Congress voted to affirm Joe Biden’s election victory. Sasse is among the small group of Republicans considered most likely to vote to convict Trump for inciting insurgency in Senate impeachment trial concludes.
Sasse’s criticism of Trump angered many activists in deeply Republican Nebraska. But Sasse also earns some respect for voicing his opinion even when it’s unpopular, a trait some Republicans say reminded them of the former president himself.
“I would rather he say what he sees and what he thinks,” said Tracy Fackler, an owner of an Omaha auto repair shop, who, like many in the state, said ‘he had voted for Trump for the same reason.
Sasse, who was elected to a second six-year term last year, doesn’t have to worry much about the consequences of his anti-Trump campaign in a state Trump won by 18 percentage points in November. Sasse’s more immediate risk is how his impeachment votes will go to Republicans if he runs for president in 2024.
Among the small number of Republican senators who sided with the Democrats on impeachment, only Sasse, 48, is seen as still aspiring to higher office. He is indeed betting that there is a political future in trying to fight for the return of the establishment Republican Party.
“We always agree on big things,” he said in his video, highlighting the values his party has often promoted before Trump. “Rule of law. Constitutionalism. Limited government.”
Even in Nebraska, Sasse has reason to believe there is a market for what he is selling.
He won nearly 27,000 more votes than Trump in the state, proving himself better at holding back rebel GOP voters and winning over Democrats. Twenty-one percent of Democrats in Nebraska supported Sasse while only 4% supported Trump, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of the electorate. Meanwhile, 7% of Republicans voted for Biden, while 3% of Republicans voted for Sasse’s challenger, Democrat Chris Janicek.
Sasse benefited from a scandal that hit Janicek. But the incumbent has also shown strength in the swing-voting neighborhoods of the Omaha suburbs, places that resemble those presidential battlefield suburbs where Trump lost ground last year.
“I think he’s just a man who stands for common principles and values, and doesn’t share with Trump,” said Mike Lewis, a 56-year-old real estate agent from South Omaha and a 30-registered Democrat. years which qualifies as moderate. “I think he is a man of morality and principle, not a party line.
It’s a diverse, old-fashioned suburb of the first ring of neighborhoods and small businesses – much like pockets of working-class and middle-class voters just outside of Milwaukee or St. Paul, in the Minnesota. and the steam rises above the Nebraska beef and other small meat packers.
Scraping the ice off his sidewalk a few blocks away, Fackler also praised Sasse for “giving his speech.”
“What he said was not popular because of the way he said it. Everyone’s just hanging out, and he said it like they were, ”Fackler said, adding that he had been an infrequent voter until Sasse ran in 2014 and Trump two years later. “When you go to the party you’re going to get a lot of criticism.”
A block away, Leah Fontenelle braved the unique numbers on her forehead bent beside Fackler.
“I would rather someone say what they think than just bow to the party,” said the retired 65-year-old medical supply director, who voted for Trump. “The party does not speak for everyone.”
But its elected officials should represent the views of the party, Kolene Woodward said.
Over 450 miles to the west, the Scotts Bluff County GOP Chairman became enraged with Sasse in mid-January after the senator said Trump had “constantly lied when he said he won the election. by a landslide ”and that the then president was“ failed in his duty to defend the Constitution and uphold the rule of law ”during the siege of the Capitol.
“He made such a public spectacle of his hatred for President Trump. And that’s not how Nebraska feels, ”said Woodward. She described Sasse as “Oh, so disrespectful to the former president.”
Three other county GOP committees voted to censor Sasse. The state’s Republican central committee is expected to consider at least eight separate resolutions to censor it when it meets next month.
Several other Republicans have faced similar reprimands at home, including Reps Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Fred Upton of Michigan and Tom Rice of South Carolina.
Sasse’s criticism of Trump is not the only complaint Republicans have against the senator. Some Republicans complain about his style as a teacher. Sasse graduated from Harvard and Yale, and then served as president of the University of Midland, a Christian school in eastern Nebraska.) Critics also say that during his six years in office, Sasse did not has not led a flagship bill or participated in a regular fundraiser for the party.
During his 2014 campaign, Sasse repeatedly said that he identified himself more as a Tory than a Republican.
The sentiment emerged in the video posted by Sasse on February 4. He called the state’s angry GOP committee members not in tune with some of the committee members itself, but with other Nebraska Republicans and, more broadly, Nebraska voters.
Bleeding “Trump skeptics” would be “terrible for our party,” he said, and called for refocusing on shared conservative principles.
It’s a tactic that could persuade Lewis, the self-proclaimed moderate Democrat, to support Sasse on the national stage.
“I don’t agree with him all the time,” Lewis said. “But I agree with his principles and his willingness to speak out.”
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