OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – When Ben Sasse Heard that Republican activists in Nebraska were prepared to censor him for insufficiently supporting Donald Trump, the Republican senator did not try to dissuade them. Instead, he punched first.
In a five-minute video posted on Facebook and YouTube, Sasse criticized Republican colleagues for following a “personality cult” and “acting as if politics were religion”.
It is the apologetic approach that Nebraskans expect – and even appreciate – from their junior senator, who perhaps more than any other rising Republican leader is cultivating anti-Trumpism as his brand.
Sasse said Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud were “lies” and that Trump “angered a crowd that attacked the Capitol” on January 6, when Congress was voting to assert Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Sasse is among the small group of Republicans considered most likely to vote to condemn Trump on charges of inciting an insurrection when the Senate impeachment trial concludes.
Sasse’s criticism of Trump is angering many deeply Republican activists in Nebraska. But Sasse is also gaining some respect for speaking his mind, even when it is unpopular, a trait that some Republicans say reminds them of the former president himself.
“I prefer him to say what he is seeing and what he is thinking,” said Tracy Fackler, who owns an Omaha repair shop, who, like many across the state, said she voted for Trump for the same reason.
Sasse, who was elected for a second six-year term last year, need not worry too much about the consequences of his anti-Trump campaign in a state that Trump won by 18 percentage points in November. Sasse’s most immediate risk is how his votes on impeachment will go to Republicans if he runs for president in 2024.
Of the small number of Republican senators who allied themselves with Democrats in impeachment, only Sasse, 48, is seen as aspiring for a higher office. He is, in fact, betting that there is a political future in the struggle for the return of the established Republican party.
“We still agree on some important things,” he said in his video, pointing to the values that his party used to promote before Trump. “Rule of law. Constitutionalism. Limited government.”
Even in Nebraska, Sasse has reason to think that there is a market for what he is selling.
He won almost 27,000 more votes than Trump in the state, proving to be better at holding on to Republican rebel voters and beating Democrats. Twenty-one percent of Nebraska Democrats supported Sasse, while only 4% supported Trump, according to AP VoteCast, an electorate poll. Meanwhile, 7% of Republicans voted for Biden, while 3% of Republicans voted for Sasse’s opponent, Democrat Chris Janicek.
Sasse benefited from a scandal that struck Janicek. But the incumbent also showed strength in neighborhoods with a decisive vote in the Omaha suburb, places that resemble those presidential battle-state suburbs where Trump lost ground last year.
“I think he is just a man who stands for common principles and values and does not agree with Trump,” said Mike Lewis, a 56-year-old real estate agent in southern Omaha and a 30-year-old Democrat who calls himself a moderate. “I believe that he is a man of morals and principles, and not of party lines.”
It is a diverse, older, first-rate suburb of neighborhoods and small businesses – not unlike pockets of working and middle-class voters on the outskirts of Milwaukee, or St. Paul, Minn. Omaha’s once prosperous corrals are just a mile east and steam rises above Nebraska Beef and other smaller refrigerators.
Scraping ice from the sidewalk a few blocks away, Fackler also praised Sasse for “speaking what he said”.
“What he said was not popular because of the way he said it. Everyone else just meddled and he just said what it was like, ”said Fackler, adding that he had been a rare voter until Sasse ran in 2014 and Trump two years later. “When you enter the party, you will receive a lot of criticism.”
A block away, Leah Fontenelle faced the single digit on her porch to side with Fackler.
“I prefer someone to say what they think than just bow to the party,” said the 65-year-old retired medical supplies director who voted for Trump. “The party doesn’t speak for everyone.”
But its elected officials must represent the party’s views, said Kolene Woodward.
Over 450 miles to the west, Scotts Bluff County Republican Party president was furious with Sasse in mid-January, after the senator said Trump “lied consistently, claiming that he ‘won the election with an overwhelming victory’ and that the then president was “abandoned his duty to defend the Constitution and uphold the rule of law” during the siege of the Capitol
“He made 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 ex-president.”
Three other Republican committees in the county voted to censor Sasse. The central republican state committee is expected to consider at least eight separate resolutions to censor him when it meets next month.
Several other Republicans faced similar rebukes at home, including representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Fred Upton of Michigan and Tom Rice of South Carolina.
Sasse’s criticism of Trump is not the only complaint that Republicans have against the senator. Some Republicans complain about his teaching style. Sasse graduated from Harvard and Yale and was later president of Midland University, a Christian school in eastern Nebraska.) Critics also say that in his six years in office, Sasse did not lead important legislation or regularly participated in the party fundraising.
During his 2014 campaign, Sasse repeatedly said he identified himself more as a conservative than as a Republican.
The sentiment showed in the video that Sasse released on February 4. He considered the angry Republican committee members to be out of step not only with some of the committee itself, but with other Nebraska Republicans and, even more widely, Nebraska voters.
Eliminating “Trump skeptics” would be “terrible for our party,” he said, and called for a focus on shared conservative principles.
It is a tactic that could persuade Lewis, the self-styled moderate Democrat, to support Sasse on the national scene.
“I don’t agree with him all the time,” said Lewis. “But I agree with your principles and willingness to speak your mind.”