Sen. Ben Sasse Leaving Senate in January, Governor Confirms

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) listens as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington on Sep. 27, 2018. Tom Williams/AFP via Getty Images

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) is leaving the Senate in January 2023 after the University of Florida officially approved him as president-elect on Wednesday, according to Nebraska’s governor.

Florida’s Board of Governors confirmed Sasse to the university’s top leadership position. He is expected to step down from the Senate and take the position in early 2023.

“Dr. Sasse is exactly the right leader, right now, for the University of Florida,” University of Florida Board of Trustees Chair Mori Hosseini said Wednesday.

And university board member Alan Levine stated that he believes the Republican senator “can open doors for the university, not just for the University of Florida, but as a flagship institution for the entire state university system.”

Under the agreement, board members signed off on a five-year contract for Sasse and will pay him $1 million per year with incentives. He’s slated to start his role on Feb. 6, according to Politico.

Sasse has a Ph.D. from Yale University and a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University. Previously, he served as president of Midland University, a private college in Nebraska.

“We aspire for Gainesville to be the center of a revolution in higher education in America,” Sasse said. “And we want our graduates to go out and change the world.”

After the university announced it was hiring Sasse, students protested at the campus and chanted left-wing slogans.

“It’s important to recognize that we live in a time when the subset of folks that are angriest tend to get the most attention,” Sasse told the Board of Governors, according to Politico. “There is always going to be, in a time as disrupted as ours, a sort of sensationalist tendency to take whatever an angriest moment is and pretend it’s a representative moment. Those are not the representative moments.”

January Departure

Outgoing Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, told local media Wednesday that Sasse’s resignation won’t come until January. Gov.-elect Jim Pillen, also a Republican, will name Sasse’s replacement.

Some analysts suspect Pillen could name Ricketts to the seat as the current governor was one of Pillen’s chief supporters during his campaign. When asked by the Omaha World-Herald, Pillen did not name any possible candidates.

“We’ll wait until the time comes,” Pillen told the paper. The exact date Sasse will leave was not disclosed.

Sasse’s current six-year term is up in January 2027. The senator has drawn considerable criticism from fellow Republicans for his critical statements against former President Donald Trump and for voting to convict the former president during a Senate impeachment trial last year.

For his part, Trump sharply criticized Sasse in a Federalist interview published last year. The former president endorsed Sasse’s reelection in 2020 but said Sasse was always hostile toward him.

“Terrible senator. This started right at the beginning,” Trump said, adding, “The problem with the Republicans is they don’t stick together. You don’t have Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse in the Democrat Party.”

Before the 2020 election, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked Trump to give him a chance, the former president said. At the time, Sasse was trying to avoid a primary challenge.

“I say, ‘Keep him out. Guy’s a loser.’ So they said, ‘No, no, no. He wants to make peace,’” Trump remarked. “He was like a little boy. He was so well behaved. He didn’t say a word. And they made a case as to why I should let him back into the fold,” he added.