Ben Sasse

Early life

A fifth-generation Nebraskan, Sasse was born on February 22, 1972, in Plainview, Nebraska, the son of Linda K. (Dunklau) and Gary Lynn Sasse. He graduated from Fremont Senior High School, Fremont, Nebraska in 1990, where he was valedictorian.

Sasse graduated from Harvard University, in 1994, with a bachelor's degree in government. He also studied at the University of Oxford, during the fall of 1992, on a junior year abroad program. He graduated from St. John’s College, in 1998, with a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies. He also obtained a Master of Arts, Master of Philosophy and Ph.D, all in history, from Yale University, in 2004. His dissertation, The Anti-Madalyn Majority: Secular Left, Religious Right, and the Rise of Reagan's America, won the Theron Rockwell Field and George Washington Egleston Prizes.

1994 - 2009

From September 1994 to November 1995, Sasse worked as an associate consultant at the management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group. For the next year, Sasse served as consultant/executive director for the Christians United For Reformation (CURE). During his tenure, CURE merged with the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE), and Sasse became executive director of ACE in Anaheim, California.

From January 2004 to January 2005, Sasse served as chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy in Washington, D.C. and as a part-time assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin by commuting to Austin to teach. Sasse left the Department of Justice in 2005 to serve as chief of staff to representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebr.) from January 2005 to July 2005.

Sasse then advised the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., on national security issues from July 2005 to September 2005 as a consultant. Sasse moved to Austin, Texas, to resume his professorship full-time from September 2005 to December 2006.

From December 2006 to December 2007, Sasse served as counselor to the secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Washington, D.C., where he advised the secretary on a broad spectrum of health policy issues, from healthcare access to food safety and security.

In July 2007, Sasse was nominated by President George W. Bush to the post of assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His appointment was confirmed by the Senate in December 2007 and served until the end of the Bush administration, in January 2009. During his tenure at HHS, Sasse took an unpaid leave from the University of Texas.

During 2009, Sasse was advising private equity clients and health care investors and teaching at the University of Texas. In October 2009, he officially joined the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs’ Center for Politics and Governance as a fellow, before being appointed president of Midland University.

Midland University

Sasse was announced as the 15th president of Midland University in October 2009. At the age of 37, he became one of the youngest chief executives in American higher education when he took over leadership of the 128-year-old institution in the spring of 2010. Sasse's grandfather, Elmer Sasse, worked for Midland for 33 years, mainly as vice president of finance. The school was experiencing financial and academic difficulties; Sasse is credited with "turn(ing) it around," rebranding "Midland Lutheran College" as Midland University, instituting new policies (including spot quizzes and class attendance), and "prodigious fundraising."

Sasse was officially installed as president on December 10, 2010. When he was appointed, enrollment was at a historic low and the college was "on the verge of bankruptcy." During his tenure as president, enrollment grew from 590 to 1,300 students. When nearby Dana College was forced to close, Sasse managed to hire much of the faculty and enable most of the students to transfer to Midland.

When Sasse announced his intention to run for U.S. Senate, he offered to resign his post at Midland. Instead, the Board asked him to stay at Midland under a partial leave of absence; in October 2013, his employment contract was amended to reduce his remuneration. Sasse stepped down as president of Midland in January 2015.

2014 election

In October 2013, Sasse officially announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat occupied by Republican Mike Johanns, who announced that he would not be running for re-election in 2014. As of October 2013, his fundraising total of nearly $815,000 from individual donors in his first quarter broke Nebraska's previous record of $526,000 from individual donors, set in 2007 by Mike Johanns while he was sitting U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.

In announcing his Senate candidacy, Sasse expressed strong opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA, a.k.a. "Obamacare"), describing himself as "the anti-Obamacare candidate", later declaring that "[i]f it lives, America as we know it will die." Sasse's campaign website indicated that he was pro-life, stating "even one abortion is too many". The website did not refer explicitly to same-sex marriage, but states "Ben believes marriage is between one man & one woman..."

Primary opponent Shane Osborn questioned the depth of Sasse's opposition to the ACA, publicizing articles and speeches delivered by Sasse during and after the passage of the measure through Congress; according to the Omaha World-Herald, "Osborn's campaign appears intent on questioning whether Sasse is a true conservative." The Osborn campaign cited, among other pieces, a 2009 Bloomberg Businessweek column entitled "Health-Care Reform: The Rush to Pass a Bad Bill" stating that "There's an emerging consensus that this [an individual mandate] might be a good idea", and a 2010 speech in which Sasse predicted that Republicans would probably lack the votes to repeal the ACA, stating that "a middle class entitlement has never been repealed", and opining that Republicans had failed to offer a viable alternative, preferring to stage "symbolic repeal votes". Sasse's response to the Osborn campaign's assertions was that in his articles and speeches, he was describing the political landscape rather than giving his own opinions on the merits of the ACA's provisions; to a World-Herald reporter, he declared "I have never changed my position on thinking Obamacare is a bad idea".

On May 13, 2014, Sasse won 92 of 93 counties and secured the Republican nomination with 109,829 votes, or 49.4% of all votes cast; banker Sid Dinsdale came in second, with 49,829 votes (22.4%), followed by former state treasurer Shane Osborn, with 46,850 votes (21.1%).

On November 4, 2014, Sasse won the general election for the U.S. Senate, defeating Democratic nominee David Domina with 64.4% of the vote to Domina's 31.5%.

Tenure

Sasse assumed office as a United States senator on January 3, 2015. He was officially sworn in when the 114th Congress convened on January 6, 2015.

In 2016, Sasse was the only senator from either party to vote against the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which was intended to address abuse of heroin and opioid drugs by providing funds to the states for treatment and prevention programs and by making the anti-overdose drug naloxone more widely available to first responders and law enforcement agencies. Sasse stated that he was "distressed by opioid abuse", but questioned whether drug treatment should be addressed at the federal level.

2016 presidential election

In early 2016, while both parties' presidential primary election seasons were in progress, Sasse announced that he would not support Republican front-runner Donald Trump should Trump become the party's candidate; he was the first sitting senator to make such an announcement. Sasse questioned Trump's commitment to the U.S. Constitution, in particular accusing him of attacking the First Amendment; he stated that Trump had refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan; and he suggested that Trump "thinks he's running for King". He stated that if Trump won the party's nomination, then he would vote neither for him nor for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, but would probably "look for some third candidate—a conservative option, a Constitutionalist". According to a Sasse spokesman, he did not say that he would necessarily leave the party if Trump was nominated.

Trump, asked about Sasse's third-party suggestion, stated "That would be the work of a loser." Several Nebraska Republican politicians, among them state senators Bob Krist and Beau McCoy and U.S. senator Deb Fischer, took exception to Sasse's statements: Krist described Sasse's comments as "very immature", and declared that Sasse should "quietly and in a statesman-like manner allow the system to work out and provide the leadership that needs to be provided"; Fischer stated that a third-party alternative to Trump would essentially guarantee a Clinton victory.

Committees

Sasse has been appointed to serve on the following committees in the 115th Congress:

Book

Sasse is the author of the 2017 book The Vanishing American Adult.

Sasse also co-edited the book Here We Stand!: A Call from Confessing Evangelicals for a Modern Reformation with theologian James Montgomery Boice.

Personal life

Sasse, and his wife, Melissa (née McLeod) Sasse, live in Fremont, Nebraska, with their three children. The children are homeschooled.

Sasse was raised a Lutheran and baptized in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. He later became an elder in the United Reformed Churches in North America, and served on the board of trustees for Westminster Seminary California. He is currently a member at Grace Church, a Presbyterian church in Fremont.