Ben Sasse is not a farm boy
On his official Senate website, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse claims that he “grew up walking beans and detasseling corn,” and that such experiences “taught him the value of hard work.” A connection the the land, a background in and dedication to agriculture, these are the things Nebraska expects from its representatives, and during his Senate run back in 2014, these are the notes that Ben Sasse hit relentlessly.
A typical TV ad from the 2014 campaign begins with the phrase “The farmer getting up at 4 to start the day … That’s Nebraska,” and consists of mostly slow-motion shots of corn being harvested. “Nebraska’s Ben Sasse grew up working in the fields,” the ad claims, “son of a football coach,” who promises to “do better for people with dirt under their fingernails.” It’s a work of almost laughable pandering, as is Sasse’s constant, conspicuous use of Nebraska Cornhusker-branded gear in public appearances.
What was remarkable about Sasse’s 2014 campaign is how well the pandering worked. Sasse demolished his Democrat opponent Dave Domina to the tune of nearly two-thirds to one. Sasse even acquired the key endorsement of the Nebraska Farm Bureau before the Republican primary had even concluded, only the second time the Bureau had endorsed a candidate during a statewide primary.
The 56,000 farming families that made up the Bureau in 2014 might’ve endorsed a different candidate had they known that Sasse would abandon the Senate Agriculture Committee not even halfway through his term.
Earlier this month, Sasse announced his appointments to the Armed Services and Judiciary committees, leaving the Ag and Government Affairs committees behind. It’s a move that flies in the face of the agricultural tradition Sasse pretended to support in his election campaign, and will mean that the Ag committee will be without a Nebraska representative for the first time in 48 years. Furthermore, it will mean that Nebraska, where agriculture dominates as an economic sector, will have no voice in crafting the next farm bill.
Ben Sasse is not a farm boy. It’s what he implies when he claims to have “grown up working in the fields,” but the reality behind that is much less romantic. Sasse just had a summer job detasselling, which he commuted to from his home in town. (Ironically, Sasse’s Democrat opponent actually was a farm boy: Dave Domina grew up feeding cows and hogs in Coleridge) It’s the commute that would become the defining characteristic of Sasse’s career, not the field-work.
Sasse went to Harvard as an undergraduate, an experience he fawningly describes as a “disappointment” second to attending Nebraska-Lincoln, straight-facedly name-dropping Husker legend Tom Osborne in another campaign ad as “T.O.” “ I went to Harvard not because I thought it was academically superior, but because it was athletically inferior,” he told Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. From a self-described “nerd” who would go on to acquire four more degrees, three of them from Yale, this is more pandering rubbish.
After graduating from Harvard in 1994, Sasse continued his commuting lifestyle. His first job out of Harvard was for a Boston consulting agency, and he wouldn’t work a real job in Nebraska until 2010. He took a few jobs in Washington, sometimes commuting to Austin, Texas for a teaching gig, at other times to Connecticut for grad school. Nebraska’s farm boy spent the bulk of his young career flying across the country for jobs in consulting firms (sometimes freelancing), government agencies, political offices, Ivy League grad programs, and professorships.
There’s nothing behind Sasse’s career, including his recent forays in the Senate, except blind ambition. He made more of a name for himself over the course of the 2016 election year, attracting splashy headlines for his grandstanding opposition to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Acting the part of populist, common-sense conservative, Sasse posted long, rambling open letters against Trump on his Facebook pages and gave puppy-dog earnest interviews to national media outlets, but would go on to kiss the ring before Trump’s victory was a week old.
Having milked what he can from the controversy surrounding Trump, Sasse is now getting back down to business. That’s where the new committee spots come in.
The only mention of the committee switch from Sasse comes courtesy of his Facebook page, which notes: “Ben was asked to join the Senate Judiciary Committee to help lead the fight to put conservatives … on the Supreme Court. With the Scalia seat vacant and the possibility of one or two more vacancies, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be ground-zero in the battle for the direction of the Supreme Court.”
Sasse’s preference in committee spots betray his priorities. The personal advancement to be found in the Judiciary committee, the glamorous and newsworthy work of Supreme Court nomination, is more important to Sasse than the near 50 years of work Nebraskans have put into the unsexy Ag committee.
Ben Sasse is not a farm boy. He’s the very definition of an élite: Harvard and Yale-educated, jet-setting Washington political staffer and consultant, and unscrupulous tufthunter. He pulled the wool over the eyes of Nebraskan farmers in 2014. It won’t be so easy the next time around.
