An appointment has been issued by Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen for the recently vacated seat of Ben Sasse, who officially resigned recently. The appointment was handed down to the state’s former Republican Governor Pete Ricketts for the Cornhusker State’s next senator.
Rickets previously carried out two terms working as the top official for the state from 2015 until just last week when his successor made the move into the governor’s mansion.
Rickets was personally chosen by Govern Pillen to take over the recently vacated seat in the Senate, with the governor explaining that the process to replace Sasse was being taken “incredibly seriously” due to the fact that the appointee needs to be able to “represent the people” of Nebraska, as explained by NBC.
Pillen stated that the next person to hold the Senate chair must reflect “values and ideology important to Nebraskans,” must also believe in “less government and fiscal accountability,” and overall just be a “person of incredible faith, God-fearing like almost all Nebraskans.”
“It’s clear the person for the job was Sen.-designate Pete Ricketts,” he explained.
As explained by a report from The New York Times, Ricketts explained during a recent news conference in the wake of Pillen choosing to appoint him that the Senate has to “hold Washington, D.C., accountable for the waste and the fraud,” going further that the government needs to be dealt with more like a business “just like we’ve done here in Nebraska.”
“For me, it came down to a single question: How can I best serve the people of Nebraska and advance our conservative values?” explained Ricketts as part of a news release picked up by NBC. “In Congress, we’re in a fight for the future of our nation, and it’s a fight we have to win.”
Rickets is known to be from a family which has historically been quite invested into the politics of Nebraska. Joe Ricketts, his father and the founder and former chief executive of the financial services company TD Ameritrade, handed over donations to a number of Republican candidates across the nation.
Rickets spent roughly $1.3 million throughout the Republican primary for the governor just last year, assisting Pillen in securing the position from another candidate that sported the backing of former President Donald Trump. This appointment was made public just a few short days in the wake of the official announcement of resignation from Sen. Sasse, who elected to take up a spot as the president of the University of Florida where he was offered a salary of close to $1 million.
