Randomly Noted

The extravagant courtship of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson which produced today’s Senate passage of the Democrats’ health reform bill isn’t the first time the thinly populated state has played a disproportionate role in a crucial policy debate. In May 1985, Sen. Ed Zorinsky cast the key vote in President Reagan’s landmark budget-reduction bill. A young reporter in the Washington, D.C., bureau of The Omaha World-Herald, I covered the Republican majority’s courtship of Democrat Zorinsky and the subsequent ”thank you’s” he received from Reagan and then-Vice President George Bush, who, by the way, invited the Nebraskan to switch parties. (He declined.) Zorinsky, who died two years later, was a more independent thinker than Nelson. By backing the Reagan Republicans, Zorinsky placed his fiscal principles above partisan politics - Cornhusker Democrats have always been a conservative bunch. That said, Zorinsky’s “yes” vote didn’t come without a price; the quid pro quo he secured from the GOP came in the form of a fatter  federal farm bill. Similarly, Nelson has won a passel of pork for Nebraska, a sprawling state with a tiny population, by casting the deciding healthcare vote – this, even as the Democratic majority also caved to Nelson’s attacks against federal abortion funding.As dramatic (by Washington standards) as today’s healthcare reform vote was, the 1985 budget vote was even more so: political junkies will recall that California Republican Sen. Pete Wilson, recovering from an appendectomy, had to be wheeled into the chamber to vote. Zorinsky himself met at least 10 times with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole in the run-up to the vote; Reagan’s Budget Director  David Stockman was also in on the wooing of Zorinsky. Vice-President Bush cut short a trip to Arizona to break a tie. By coincidence, the Democrats weren’t able to count on another Nebraskan: Sen. J.J. Exon was undergoing urgent gallbladder surgery at the time. The state’s senior senator, Democrat Exon would have voted with his party despite his own conservative tendencies. The resulting vote passing the 1986 budget proposal was 50-49.Zorinsky’s death at age 58 was a shock. It was March 1987, the night of the annual Omaha Press Club gala. Zorinsky, who had gamely performed a rhythm-and-blues number to an audience of pols, journalists and businessmen, collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, where he died shortly after. Nebraska’s governor at the time was a Republican, and so the conservative Democrat who had been so assiduously wooed by the Republicans was succeeded by Republican appointee, businessman  Dave Karnes.