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Sasse confirms he will resign from Senate to become University of Florida president [1]
['Don Walton', 'Associated Press File Photo', 'Justin Wan', 'Journal Star', 'J. Scott Applewhite', 'Associated Press', 'Alex Brandon', 'Evan Vucci', 'Gwyneth Roberts', 'Stefani Reynolds']
Date: 2022-10
Sen. Ben Sasse will resign from the U.S. Senate to accept the presidency of the University of Florida, returning to academia after representing Nebraska in Washington for eight years.
Sasse was unanimously recommended by the university's search committee and will visit the campus in Gainesville on Monday to meet with students, faculty and other members of the community before he is formally interviewed by its board of trustees on Nov. 1.
Sasse, a solid conservative Republican vote in the Senate, helped steer new conservative nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court through the Senate Judiciary Committee and ultimate Senate confirmation while also voting to convict former Republican President Donald Trump of incitement to insurrection in his second impeachment trial in 2021.
Only seven Republican senators cast votes to impeach the former president for his actions related to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol as Congress met to formally confirm the election of Joe Biden as president after he defeated Trump in November of 2020.
There always had been an open hint that Sasse's stay in Washington might not be long, certainly not as long as some of the veteran senators who have made it a career and grown old in the Senate.
His website bluntly stated: "An opponent of perpetual incumbency, he has no intention of spending his life in the Senate."
Gov. Pete Ricketts will appoint a successor to fill the Senate seat until January of 2025. Nebraska voters will elect a new senator to fill the final two years of Sasse's term in 2024.
Sasse's departure opens a future political pathway for Ricketts if he chooses to seek a seat in the Senate after he is term-limited out of the governor's office at the end of the year. Ricketts was the Republican Senate nominee in 2006, losing to incumbent Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson.
In a brief telephone interview, Sasse said he was excited to fill the leadership role in "the most important institution in the most dynamic state."
The president oversees the state's flagship university, which enrolls more than 50,000 students.
"The future of work is the biggest challenge we face," Sasse said in an interview on Thursday, one that universities need to tackle.
"I am excited to be able to help build the University of Florida's potential."
In a statement, the University of Florida presidential search committee pointed to Sasse's "distinguished academic career" with degrees from Yale and Harvard, as a faculty member at the University of Texas in Austin and five years as president of Midland University in Fremont.
"This is right for the University of Florida, right for the state of Florida and right for the Sasse family," Rahul Patel, chair of the presidential search committee, said.
"Ben brings intellectual curiosity, a belief in the power and potential of American universities and an unmatched track record of leadership spanning higher education, government and the private sector," he said.
The search committee said it focused on a dozen highly qualified and diverse candidates, including nine presidents at major research universities, and Sasse was its unanimous choice.
"The University of Florida is the most interesting university in America right now," Sasse said. "It's the most important university in the nation's most economically dynamic state."
While Sasse won all 93 counties and racked up record vote counts in his two Senate races in Nebraska, his opposition to Trump sparked condemnation and censure by the Nebraska Republican Party.
"The anger in this state party has never been about me violating principle or abandoning conservative policy — I'm one of the most conservative voters in the Senate — the anger's always been simply about me not bending the knee to one guy," Sasse said last year.
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[1] Url:
https://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/sasse-confirms-he-will-resign-from-senate-to-become-university-of-florida-president/article_1b48f3d5-386f-560f-8e01-e25ff1d9ec1c.html
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