Election To The Senate
In 1996, Hagel ran for the open US Senate seat created by the retirement of Democrat J. James Exon. Hagel's opponent was Ben Nelson, then the sitting Governor of Nebraska. Although many people believed Hagel had no chance of winning, he won a "stunning upset" in the election, receiving 56% of the vote, winning virtually all demographic groups including many black precincts that had always voted Democratic in previous elections, and becoming the first Republican in twenty-four years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.
Six years later in 2002, Hagel overwhelmingly won re-election with over 83% of the vote, the largest margin of victory in any statewide race in Nebraska history.
Read more about this topic: Chuck Hagel
Famous quotes containing the words election and/or senate:
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
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“This is a Senate of equals, of men of individual honor and personal character, and of absolute independence. We know no masters, we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion; not an arena for the exhibition of champions.”
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852)