Benjamin E. Sasse is just the sort of guy you’d expect to run for high office someday, but the Midland University president’s decision to do so now invites all sorts of headaches for his campus.
The 41-year-old leader of Midland, a liberal-arts college in Fremont, Neb., that is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is now a Tea Party favorite in the race for a U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska.
His candidacy in the May 2014 primary has brought attention and notoriety to a campus with little national profile, but it also has forced the college’s governing board to make clear that the president does not speak for the university when he’s out on the stump.
Additionally, there is the matter of assuring students and the faculty that Mr. Sasse can, at least for now, juggle the duties of the university’s presidency with the demands of the campaign.
Mr. Sasse has never run for political office before, but his résumé screams ambition. A former U.S. assistant secretary of health and human services, Mr. Sasse holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Yale, where he wrote a dissertation on conservative politics during the cold war.
Lest he be branded an egghead, Mr. Sasse describes himself as a fixer who thrives on a crisis. He was drawn to Midland, in 2009, in part because the place was going down the tubes. With fewer than 600 students, the college faced the real prospect of bankruptcy. During his tenure, enrollment has grown to 1,285.
“I’m a turnaround guy,” says Mr. Sasse, who also has consulted for private-equity clients at the Boston Consulting Group. “I’m not a traditional college president.”
Indeed. The Midland president’s decision to run for the Senate while he is still on the job is rare, if not unprecedented, for a college leader.
If he succeeded in securing the Republican nomination, in May, Mr. Sasse would be considered all but a shoo-in to fill the seat now held by U.S. Sen. Mike Johanns, who is retiring.
The Board Chairman’s View
As early as July, when Mr. Sasse declared his intention to run, the chairman of Midland’s Board of Directors sought to allay concerns about what the candidacy would mean for the university.
The chairman, Gary A. Perkins, sent an email to students and members of the faculty and staff, saying that “in no way should it be implied that the opinions of any one member of our campus represent the views of our institution.” He also assured that “Midland resources will obviously not be used to support a political candidacy, as that is not our mission.”
“While political campaigns are inherently controversial, Midland is not,” wrote Mr. Perkins, who is president and chief executive officer of Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, in Omaha.
On the trail, Mr. Sasse is anything but tepid. His distaste for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature health-care legislation, is central to the campaign.
“If it lives, America as we know it will die,” Mr. Sasse told the Omaha World-Herald this month. “If the idea of America is to live, it must be stopped.”
Mr. Sasse faces three challengers in the primary. They include Shane Osborn, a former state treasurer; Bart McLeay, a lawyer; and Sid Dinsdale, a banker.
Mr. Perkins, who has contributed to Republican candidates in past campaigns, said in an interview that the board’s support of Mr. Sasse’s decision does not necessarily mean that its members are all aligned with him politically. But the board chairman says he personally has never cringed when seeing the president’s public comments.
“To date, I’ve not read anything that’s surprised me,” Mr. Perkins said.
Mr. Sasse says he intends to take some leave during the campaign, and the university expects to name an interim president before the May 13 primary. He officially began his campaign this month, and some day-to-day operations have already been delegated to cabinet members."I’ve got a moral obligation to see certain projects through,” Mr. Sasse said.
One of Mr. Sasse’s key responsibilities is to head up an $11-million campaign to deal with deferred maintenance on the campus of the now-defunct Dana College, which Midland purchased this past summer. Midland, which enrolled 321 of Dana’s students, plans to reopen the campus for classes in 2015 or 2016.
Forbidden Activity
There may be good reasons for Mr. Sasse to stay on as president, but doing so invites scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service. As a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization, Midland is prohibited from engaging in political activity. That means Mr. Sasse cannot use the college’s telephones, computers, email accounts, mailing lists, or other resources in the service of his campaign, says Marcus S. Owens, a former director of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division.
“The safest course of action is to sever the link between the institution and the candidate,” Mr. Owens said.
“In the hurly-burly of the campaign,” he added, “the candidate is thinking about getting elected and the campaign staff may not be paying as close attention to which automobile they are using or which email address they are using. It creates a risk.”
Mr. Sasse is keeping a record of his time on the campaign trail and says he will be “returning a lot of my paycheck” because he is not working full time as president. He has also told students and faculty and staff members at Midland that they should not volunteer for his campaign.
There is some precedent for college presidents’ pursuing political office, but Mr. Sasse’s decision to stay on the job temporarily sets him apart. The late John R. Silber, a former president of Boston University, took a yearlong sabbatical when he ran as a Democrat in an unsuccessful campaign for governor of Massachusetts in 1990.
Alex Sanders, a former president of the College of Charleston, retired from his position before beginning a campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2002. Mr. Sanders, a Democrat, lost to Lindsey O. Graham, a Republican.
“I definitely severed all ties with the College of Charleston, including moving out of my office and the president’s house, before I started running,” Mr. Sanders said.
Mr. Sasse primarily lives in a privately owned residence, but the university maintains an apartment for him closer to the campus. The apartment and a university-owned vehicle provided for Mr. Sasse’s use as president will not be used for campaigning, Mr. Perkins said.
Possible Backlash
Mr. Sanders said that if he had not retired as president of the College of Charleston before his campaign began, there would not have been any way to insulate the institution from a possible backlash. Even after his retirement, Mr. Sanders said, the college was bombarded with public-records requests on behalf of his opponent, who pored over guest lists from parties and other documents in search of anything that could be used against Mr. Sanders.
“Anything I said in the campaign, as Mr. Sasse is discovering, reflected upon the college, no matter how many times he says, ‘I’m not speaking for the college,’” said Mr. Sanders, a former chief judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals who also served in the state legislature.
Mr. Sasse, however, said that college presidents are overly reluctant to take stands on civic issues. He said he is not concerned about offending donors or alienating students who may disagree with him. On the contrary, the college’s mission is to allow for a diversity of thought.
“Higher education pats itself on the back all the time about valuing intellectual discourse,” Mr. Sasse said, “and lots of American thought and conservative thought isn’t taken seriously in the academy.”
On the Midland campus, Mr. Sasse’s candidacy has been the source of excitement and pride for some students and faculty members. Kirsten J. Klitz, president of the Student Senate, said her classmates frequently post Mr. Sasse’s press clippings on social media.
“I can’t think of one time I’ve ever heard anyone say they are upset about his endeavors,” she said.
Lance R. Johnson, president of the Faculty Senate, said that he is thankful that Mr. Sasse is maintaining his connection to the college because it may help keep the president around if he loses his Senate bid. (In the event of a victory, Senate rules related to outside income would probably forbid Mr. Sasse to continue as president.)
If his track record on the campaign trail is any indicator, Midland may want to keep Mr. Sasse on board as a fund raiser. Still considered a newcomer to politics, he made headlines by raising $815,000 in less than two months.
More cash is likely to roll in. Last week Mr. Sasse received the endorsement of the Senate Conservatives Fund, a national group with a history of steering money toward Tea Party candidates.
But Mr. Sasse may have a little more work to do before he gets a full-throated endorsement from Midland’s Student Senate president, who hedged a bit when asked if Mr. Sasse had her vote.
“If I had to decide right now, I would say yes,” Ms. Klitz said. “Probably.”
