Senator Ben Nelson leaving politics after more than 20 years

OMAHA (AP) – One of his proudest moments in the U.S. Senate, Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said as he prepares to leave the chamber after two terms, came in 2005 when he helped form the so-called Gang of 14, a bipartisan group of 14 senators who brokered a deal to avoid a filibuster showdown over judicial nominees.

That bipartisan effort seems a lifetime away as the Senate wallows in deep partisan rancor.

While the 71-year-old Nelson insists his reasons for bowing out of a run for a third term were personal, he joins a number of retiring moderates who have expressed their chagrin over political polarization in Washington.

“I’m totally frustrated by it,” Nelson said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “Right now, bipartisanship has gone underground.”

The vitriol contrasts with Nelson’s Gang of 14 work, when he and six other Democrats joined with seven Republicans to broker a deal to avoid Republican leaders’ threat to invoke the so-called “nuclear option,” which would have allowed a simple majority instead of a two-thirds vote to confirm President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. It is considered an extreme move that can trigger all-out partisan battling.

Nelson’s work to avert that option, his support of Bush’s tax cuts and his tendency support conservative fiscal and social stances solidified his reputation as a centrist.

Other senators who served in the Gang of 14 with Nelson – including Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine and then-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut – are among those moderates leaving the Senate in the coming weeks. Some have cited the bitter partisan divide as they make their exits.

“I’m so passionate about changing the tenor in Congress because I’ve seen that it can be different,” Snowe said Thursday in her farewell speech on the Senate floor.

If the work of the Gang of 14 was proof that a collegial Senate is possible, the backlash Nelson faced over providing the final vote needed to advance President Barack Obama’s health care initiative showed how acrimonious the partisan atmosphere in Washington had become by 2009.

Conservatives erupted in protest after Nelson’s vote to send the health care bill to the full Senate, where it eventually passed, and accused Nelson of betraying his deeply conservative state.

Nelson defends his vote and bristles at the mention of Republicans’ most prolific criticism of it – that Nelson traded his vote for a deal that would have given Nebraska federal funding for Medicaid expansion. The proposal was removed before the bill’s final passage, but its derogatory moniker – the “Cornhusker Kickback” – persisted.

Nelson maintains he was trying to get federal funding for all states, because he disagreed with the measure’s threat to withhold states’ entire Medicaid allotment if they failed to expand Medicaid.

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the vast majority of the health care law in June – but struck down the provision to force states to expand Medicaid coverage – Nelson said he felt vindicated.

In retrospect, Nelson said he wishes he had better explained the vote to Nebraskans.

“I underestimated the ... negative impact that it was going to have,” he said. “I wouldn’t have changed my vote ... but I probably would have tried harder to explain what the benefits were going to be.”

Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, another centrist who is leaving the Senate after 26 years, also felt the backlash over the health care vote.

“If there was ever a mountain of misinformation on legislation, that would be the poster child for it,” Conrad said.

Nelson’s legacy should not be defined by the health care debate, said Conrad, who described Nelson as leader who’s not afraid to made unpopular decisions.

“There’s a certain amount of ... political gamesmanship that goes on in this town,” Conrad said. “Ben is not interested in that. He’s interested in solving problems, dealing with the substance, having a plan and reaching conclusions. I’ve just always admired that in him. I’ve counted myself very lucky to have him as a colleague.”

Nelson’s political career began with his 1990 election as governor, when he beat incumbent Gov. Kay Orr in the state’s fourth-closest gubernatorial race in history. He was re-elected in 1994 by a landslide.

As governor, Nelson cut taxes, kept money in the state’s “rainy day” fund and helped create a health insurance program for uninsured children.

In 1996, he made his first run for the U.S. Senate. He lost handily to Republican Chuck Hagel, but four years later was elected to replace then-Sen. Bob Kerrey.

In the Senate, Nelson was a key force in securing the new U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base south of Omaha. The complex for the command, which oversees nuclear, space and cyberspace missions, is expected to be finished by September 2016.

Nelson became mired in controversy in 2002, when a federal judge ruled that Nelson, while governor, engaged in a politically motivated and orchestrated plot to keep a low-level nuclear waste dump from being built in northeast Nebraska. In 2005, the state of Nebraska paid a $145 million settlement to the low-level waste compact, made up of four other states: Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

Nelson defended his attempts to keep the dump out of Nebraska, saying the radioactive waste was a threat to Nebraska’s land and water.

Among those praising Nelson as he prepared to leave the Senate was his Republican colleague and former Nebraska governor, Sen. Mike Johanns.

“I can tell you from firsthand experience that Ben Nelson always had the best interests of our state at heart,” Johanns said on the Senate floor this week. “He was enormously hard-working.”

Nelson said polling left him convinced he could have won re-election, but it was a plea from one of his four grown children that kept him from trying.

“One of my kids said, ‘Look, Dad, I’d like to have more of your time.’ That just sort of clinched it for me,” he said. “That’s not an unfair request. For 20 years, I was sharing my time with my family and with the citizens of Nebraska.”

While he’s leaving the Senate, Nelson insisted he’s “nowhere near retiring.”

Asked if he plans – as do many former lawmakers – to become a lobbyist, Nelson said Senate rules ban him from negotiating with any firms until he is out of office.

“But generally, I’m going to do something in Washington and spend a lot more time in Nebraska,” he said. “If I get fortunate, maybe somebody will ask me to serve on their corporate board.”