Can he save Washingon, DC? Will he even get the chance?

[CountDeMoney]

A hero of common-sense liberalism from the past.  A Democrat even GOPtards admired.  CAN IT WORK

A Favored Son Returns to Uphill Battle in Nebraska

LINCOLN, Neb. — Bob Kerrey, the former governor and two-term senator from Nebraska, has returned to his native state after a decade in New York City to try to reclaim his Senate seat.

The state's once-favored son — a bridge in Omaha bears his name — now finds himself recast as a carpetbagger, navigating a landscape both familiar and foreign after 12 years of political vicissitude.

He was welcomed back with an immediate challenge to his residency, a barrel of snark and an inability to find so much as a frying pan in his modest, hastily acquired home.

"I am managing the personal transition," Mr. Kerrey, 68, said as he sipped a coffee in a shop here.

"My first homecoming was in 1969," he said, referring to his return from Vietnam, where he served as a member of the Navy SEALs. "I don't have to be reminded of the importance of home and community."

Whether voters will again cotton to Mr. Kerrey, who decided to seek the seat after a fellow Democrat, Ben Nelson, opted to retire, will hinge largely on who succeeds in defining him over a short but almost certainly animated race, upon which the control of the Senate could turn.

Is he, as his advertising campaign suggests, the charismatic war hero and longtime public servant just itching to return to his beloved Nebraska, a state still smarting from its politically charged place in the negotiations over President Obama's health care law?

Or is he, as his detractors contend, a shameless opportunist culturally sullied by a decade in Manhattan (insert image of overly chic reading glasses and cappuccino here), where he served as president of the New School, now capriciously trying to give his party a whisper of hope?

"Nebraska has become more conservative, and Bob Kerrey has become more liberal," said Mark A. Fahleson, chairman of the state's Republican Party, which tried, unsuccessfully, to keep Mr. Kerrey off the ballot. "This is a state that forced a man to return to private life over a single vote on Obamacare. Plus this is a presidential election year, and Nebraska is a red state."

Polls show Mr. Kerrey badly trailing the three Republicans vying for the nomination, and he concedes that he is six months behind on organizing his campaign and raising cash. His is a decidedly uphill battle.

"I kind of liked Bob Kerrey," Terry Reeh, 55, said in an interview in a bar in West Omaha. Mr. Reeh said he voted for Mr. Kerrey for governor and for senator but would not again.

"I'm going to vote Republican down the line," he said, "because I am a pretty good Republican. I think most people in Nebraska are."

The stakes of this race may be higher for Washington and Nebraska than for Mr. Kerrey. Democrats, buoyed by the coming retirement of Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, are beginning to believe that they may be able to retain a thin majority in the Senate if one or two races go their way. So Mr. Kerrey's campaign here has become an urgent matter.

For Nebraska, the race could also be defining: Should Mr. Kerrey be defeated, the Democrats will be left with a single statewide elected official for the first time in recent memory. "I could basically hang up my hat after that, huh?" Mr. Fahleson joked.

The way that Mr. Kerrey entered the race can perhaps best be described as daft. After Mr. Nelson announced in December that he would not seek re-election, speculation about Mr. Kerrey was sparked. Yet he waited for several weeks, finally saying he would not run.

Then he decided just days before the filing deadline that, in fact, he wanted to go for it, setting off rumors around Washington that Democrats had begged him or prodded him with a promise to restore his seniority and give him choice committee assignments.

But only his wife, Sarah Paley, with whom he has a 10-year-old son, has that sort of influence on him, he said. "We were watching the Oscars," he said, "and she knew the filing deadline was coming up and she said you've got to run."

And so Mr. Kerrey took off for Nebraska and registered to vote and to run, listing his sister's house as his home and then finding a spot in the guesthouse of a friend, which became his new address.

This quixotic journey motivated Republicans to file a lawsuit saying that Mr. Kerrey did not establish legal residency or qualify as a registered voter in Nebraska before his filing. This was rejected by the Nebraska Supreme Court.

Ms. Paley is remaining in New York while their son finishes school. She intends to visit Nebraska often.

Mr. Kerrey said that the theme of his campaign would center on the notion that "it's good to be back," and that the country has to "step up its game" in terms of global competition, education and beating back partisanship. On health care, Mr. Kerrey said he would have voted for the Obama legislation, but he also said he would like to see it changed.

"My position will be fix it, don't repeal it," he said. "I prefer not single-payer, but I think you've got to get everyone in the same group. I think the commercial payers can get it done." He also says that a form of premium support, favored by many Republicans, "can work with everyone in a single group."

"I don't presume I am going to win the election talking like this," he said, "but I've never won an election as a consequence of public opinion."

Mr. Nelson was a holdout on the current legislation, now under Supreme Court review, and provided one of the final votes for its passage. He won a concession at one point from Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, which became known as the Cornhusker Kickback, which caused Mr. Nelson no shortage of grief back home, though it was not in the final legislation.

" 'Cornhusker Kickback' is burned in people's brains," said Trent Fellers, a spokesman for Jon Bruning, the state's attorney general and a Republican candidate for the Senate. "People have a lot of pride around the cornhusker, and that was sort of tarnished. People are very engaged on the health care issue here."

For now, Mr. Kerrey is meeting old friends, raising money and getting his feet on the ground. "I got up this morning and tried to make an omelet, and I couldn't find a frying pan," he said. "I'm dealing with the things like that that anyone who is in transition does."

If the detractors are getting to Mr. Kerrey, his cheerful smile and eyes, which still dance when he digs in on policy, do not show it.

"There are a lot worse things than losing an election," he said. "The top of that list would be winning and not having permission to do what needs to be done. So I'm just going to have fun."

[Ideologue]

"I'm going to vote Republican down the line," he said, "because I am a pretty good Republican. I think most people in Nebraska are."

Well, I've heard enough.  Set up the checkpoints on I-80 and get the nerve gas.